Logical Reasoning

PT14 · S2 · Q3 Deer mice normally do not travel

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Deer mice normally do not travel far from their nests, and deer mice that are moved more than half a kilometer from their nests generally never find their way back.

Given that ...

Deer mice usually don't stray far from home. If they more than 1/2 km, they usually can never find their way back.

How can it be that ...

This deer mouse that the researchers moved 2 km away from its home found its way back within a couple days?

Evaluate / Goal

It seems like the Breadcrumb detail they're leaving for us is that the researchers observed the mouse for several weeks before moving it. Maybe the correct answer will explain how that observational period led to the mouse having an atypical means of finding its way home.

Or maybe the destination the mouse was moved to, despite being 2 km away, had some unusually useful feature that allowed the mouse to get back home.

3.

Which one of the following, if true, most helps to explain how the deer mouse might have found its way back to its nest?

  1. The area to which the

    No Impact

    There's no common sense reason why a dryer, rockier drop off location would make a mouse atypically good at finding its way home.

    7% picked this

  2. Correct

    The researchers released the deer

    Why this is right

    This answer helps us speculate that the deer mouse found its way home by smelling the smoke of the campfire. Like we anticipated, this answer uses that Breadcrumb detail, that the researchers observed the mouse for several weeks. During that time, the mouse got used to the smell of their campfire, which was right by its home. When the researchers drop off the mouse 2 km from home, the mouse smells its way home by smelling its way back to the campsite. This fits with the paradoxical background fact that deer mice normally could never find their way home from that distance; but these deer mice are taking advantage of an unusual circumstance -- the campfire of some humans that have lived near the mouse's nest for the past 3 weeks.

    Skill tested: Paradox · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

    79% picked this

  3. There were very few deer

    No Impact

    There's no common sense reason why being dropped off in a location with very few mice would help a mouse to be atypically good at finding its way home.

    4% picked this

  4. The researchers had moved the

    No Impact

    There's no common sense reason why being transported in a chill dark space would make a mouse atypically good at finding its way home.

    4% picked this

  5. Animals that prey on deer

    Deepens Paradox

    There's no common sense reason why being dropped off in an area where a lot of your predators live would make a mouse atypically good at finding its way home. It would certainly heighten your motivation to get home. But you'd be sufficiently motivated to get home even without that factor. These deer mice simply don't possess the ability to get home from 2 km away, usually, whether they deeply want to or not.

    6% picked this

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