Q1 - Sea turtles nest only at their ...

[ottoman]

Can you explain why B is not the right answer?

Thank you!

[ohthatpatrick]

Sure thing.

We have a phenomenon here:
Sea turtles return to their birthplace 15-30 years later.

How do they find their way back?
The hypothesis is that they learn the smell of their birth environment and the smell guides them back.

The objective of the question stem is cast doubt on that hypothesis. This could happen two different ways:

1 - we might get info that makes it seem like they would NOT be able to smell their way back
or
2 - we might get info that suggests that SOMETHING ELSE is really the way they get back.

I'm assuming that you liked (B) by thinking it could tell us SOMETHING ELSE gets them back?

i.e. We would think, "Well, if they like the SAND from their birthplace, then the SAND is why they go back to their birthplace, not the SMELL."

The problem is that what (B) actually says is too far removed from how I just interpreted it. All (B) says is that in some random experiment, sea turtles preferred an environment that had sand from their birthplace. That doesn't tell us that the sand is WHY they preferred that environment. It could just be a coincidence. Furthermore, maybe it's the SMELL of the sand that they like, supporting the original hypothesis.

By contrast, (E) convinces us that SOMETHING ELSE must be guiding them back, because sea turtles that were unable to smell still found their way back.

Hope this helps.

[WaltGrace1983]

I'll add the wrong ones!

(A) We don't need to know more about the beaches. We just need to know why these turtles return to the beaches: is the smell? is it something else? That is the crux of this argument. We could say that the beaches are painted with rainbows and unicorns and this would serve the same function.

(B) I also think that this answer choice might even strengthen a little bit, if anything. If the sea turtles preferred the sand of their birthplaces then maybe, just maybe, they were arriving at this preference by smell. Of course, this interpretation is amidst a flood of unwarranted interpretations but either way this can not weaken. The way it affects the argument is simply too vague and we need something more concrete (maybe something directly involving smell?).

(C) I don't even know how this would impact the argument at all. If someone could tell me who LSAC was trying to fool and how they were trying to fool them I would be very interested.

(D) This actually seems to strengthen a bit too. If they have a well-developed sense of smell, then maybe it is smell that leads them back to their nesting sites after a "far-ranging migration."

(E) ~cause → same effect. Perfect.