Q25 - Among small- to medium-sized marine mammals

[dmitry]

Question Type:
Inference

Stimulus Breakdown:
Staying submerged longer correlates with diving deeper. From here on out, we can simplify things by treating these as the same, since the answers don't ask us to consider any other facors. We also know that D lasts longer than FS, and ES lasts longer than WS.

Answer Anticipation:
We can treat this just like a relative ordering game with two ordered pairs: FS - D and WS - ES, with the right side corresponding to "can stay down longer & dive deeper."Note that we know nothing about the relationship between those two pairs. It could be FS-D-WS-ES, or WS-ES-FS-D, or we could intermingle elements, as in WS-FS-D-ES. All of the COULD BE's should be consistent with these two ordered pairs. The credited response should get the ordering wrong.

Correct answer:
(D)

Answer choice analysis:
(A) WS - D - ES. Sure, D can drop into the middle of that pair. FS could be before or after WS.

(B) FS - WS - D. Works the same way. ES could be before or after D.

(C) This has WS greater than FS and D, but we know the order of those two is FS - D, so we would have FS - D - WS - ES. Works fine.

(D) ES - FS and D - WS. Either of those two could be true by itself, but we already know FS - D, so we have to string them together in order: ES - FS - D - WS. This reverses the known order of WS - ES. That means D cannot be true, so it's our answer.

(E) WS - FS -ES. That works. D could be before or after ES.

Takeaway/Pattern:
Inference questions can try to overwhelm us with variables. It can help to simplify when differences (such as longer breath, deeper dive) don't actually get used. Also, some problems might look like conditional workouts, but then turn out to be about ordering.

#officialexplanation

[DominicE471]

Wow, what a question!