PT87.S2.Q18 - Some killerwhales eat fish exclusively

youbbyun

Can someone explain why C is right and E wrong? Is it bc C aligns with the hypothesis and is what we would expect assuming the hypothesis is true, whereas for E, E allows a scenario where seals start off ignoring whales that do not eat seals, which would go against the hypothesis?

Also, I felt the language about the seals “ignoring” the not threatening whales confusing. It took me while to figure out that “ignoring” just meant not being scared of them and even being willing to go close to them. It’s the opposite of “aversion”. Anyone else got tripped up on this?

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Adam Z. Xie

The argument is that "Marine biologists hypothesize that young harbor seals start with an aversion to all killer whales but then learn to ignore those that do not eat seals."

Answer C is a scenario that the seals turn away from killer whales whose dialects are unfamiliar - that is, they have not learnt the fact that these killer whales do not eat seals, and they react as if these killer whales are predatory. C is consistent with the argument.

In contrast, answer E is a scenario that the seal has learnt to turned away after a terrible experience of getting bitten. And the default reation, as manifested by other seals that do not have this experience, is to ignore. Thus, answer E contradicts the argument and is wrong.

BlindReviewer

I remember being pretty weirded out by this question on the actual exam. I think E can be tempting because of how you interpret "learn to ignore those that do not eat seals." The hypothesis never explains HOW they learn, so it's wide open for us to make assumptions, like that in E. We think we're strengthening the hypothesis with E by showing that seals do in fact learn some kind of behavior later on.

But E tells us that seals learn to ignore the killer whales that eat seals simply through a chance encounter where they become traumatized and associate whatever killer whale attacked them with "I have to get away from this kind of whale." If you think about it, this is (as @"Adam Z. Xie" says) inconsistent with the argument. The scientists' hypothesis is trying to explain the phenomenon of seals somehow knowing to avoid the exact killer whales that eat them. If E were true, that would be really weird -- is it just by chance that every seal happens to be attacked by a seal-eating whale? Seems unlikely.

C, on the other hand, strengthens only part of the hypothesis, and so it feels a bit less "right" due to its subtlety of strengthening only the first half of the hypothesis, as mentioned in the previous comment.

Sim Simma

E just makes no sense because it adds the additional condition of "being attacked by a fish-eating whale". Like, it doesn't tell us much about how young seals start out and grow to learn, because this is just saying "well, this one was actually attacked by a fish-eating whale, so he then avoids all whales that remind him of the attacker" (hence the "avoid all KW that chatter in the attacker's dialect").