PT139.S2.P2.Q8 > Analytics

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Passage A.

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Phenomenon · Honeybees can recruit nestmates to food source

How do they do it?

Hypothesis · By "dancing"

Note that the passage explicitly says that Aristotle didn't make this connection. He merely noted that honeybees "dance" for their nestmates but did not hypothesize that the "dance" was the means of communication.

Evidence · Dance deciphered

von Frisch figured out how to read the dance and was able to locate where food was.

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Questions · What's the mechanism?

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Hypothesis · Wing vibrations

This would explain how bees can communicate in darkness but scientists (mistakenly) thought bees lacked hearing so this hypothesis was not taken seriously.

Hypothesis · Smell

Counter Evidence · For smell hypothesis

Bees can send other bees to new locations which shouldn't be possible if ordor was the means of communication.

Evidence · For wing vibration hypothesis

Bee robot could effectively simulate dance through sounds

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Context · All animals communicate

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Main Point · But only some communicate symbolically

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Example · Vervet monkeys

Experiment demonstrated that they have different alarm calls for snakes versus eagles.

Example · Honeybees

Their dance is symbolically represents distance, direction, and quality of food source.

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Example · Bees ignore some communications, suggesting symbolic communication

Experiment revealed that bees ignored dances that communicated information about presence of food in unlikely sources suggesting that communication in bees is symbolic and has a level of interpretation.

Passage Style

The passages have which one ██ ███ █████████ ████ ██ ███████

Question Type

Implied

Purpose of passage

This Inference question asks us to identify something that the two passages have in common.

Split Approach: After passage A, eliminate each answer choice that does not apply to passage A. Then, after passage B, eliminate the remaining answers that don’t describe passage B.

Sequential Approach: This question doesn’t direct our attention to any specific part of the passage, so we will approach this question with the process of elimination.

arguing that certain ████████ ███████ ███████ ██████████ ████████████

Passage A doesn’t argue that bees have human-like intelligence, so we can eliminate (A). Passage B doesn’t argue that nonhuman animals have human-like intelligence either.

illustrating the sophistication ████ █████ ███████ ████████ ███████████

Passage A is about bees, not primates, so we can eliminate (C).

describing certain scientific ███████ █████████ ████ ██████ █████████████

This is true for both passages. Passage A describes studies about how bees communicate. Passage B describes studies of bee and vervet monkey communication.

85%

airing a scientific ███████████ ████ ███ ████████ ██ ███ ██████████ █████

Passage A does discuss a scientific question about bee communication, but the question isn’t about the function of bees’ dances. Instead, the question is about the specific mechanism that bees use to communicate. Because passage A doesn’t quite discuss a controversy, and because it’s not specifically about the function of bee dances, we can eliminate (D). Also, passage B doesn’t discuss a controversy about the function of bee dances.

10%

analyzing the conditions █ ████████ ██████ ████ ████ ██ █████ ██ ██ ██████████ █ ████████

Passage A doesn’t analyze what a symbolic system must do to be considered a language, so we can eliminate (E).

Passage B does mention symbolic communication, but it doesn’t analyze the conditions that must be met for a symbolic system to be considered a language.

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PrepTest 139 - Section 2 - Passage 2 - Question 8

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PrepTest 139 - Section 2 - Passage 2 - Question 8

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