When chimpanzees become angry

A free, expert breakdown of this official LSAT Logical Reasoning question.

TopicsParadox

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Stimulus

When chimpanzees become angry at other chimpanzees, they often engage in what primatologists call "threat gestures": grunting, spitting, or making abrupt, upsweeping arm movements. Chimpanzees also sometimes attack other chimpanzees out of anger. However, when they do attack, they almost never take conversely, threat gestures are rarely followed by physical attacks.

What this question is testing

Paradox

Here's the puzzle. Both threat gestures and physical attacks happen when chimps get angry. So you'd expect them to go together — angry chimp makes a threat, then attacks. But they almost never overlap. A chimp that gestures rarely attacks, and a chimp that attacks rarely gestures first.

Anticipate

The natural way to resolve this: the two behaviors are substitutes, not stages. If the chimp gets the anger out by gesturing, it doesn't need to attack. If the chimp goes straight to attack mode, the gesturing isn't needed.

Think of it like venting. Some people yell to let off steam — and once they've yelled, they don't throw a punch. Other people skip the yelling and just throw the punch. Yelling and punching can both express anger, but they're alternatives, not stages of the same response.

Goal

An answer that explains the gestures as a release valve for aggression that would otherwise become physical.

Reading along? Open the full official question in LawHub — we show a fragment here and keep the reasoning in our own words.

The question

Which one of the following, if true, most helps to explain the information about how often threat gestures are

Answer choices

No Distinction3% picked this
Chimpanzees engage in threat gestures when they are angry in order to preserve or
This says threat gestures relate to social status. That might explain why gestures occur, but it doesn't explain why gestures and attacks almost never co-occur. The key puzzle — the substitution relationship — is left unaddressed.
3%
Correct80% picked this
Making threat gestures helps chimpanzees vent aggressive feelings and thereby avoid
Why this is right
This explains the puzzle. If threat gestures vent aggressive feelings, then once a chimp gestures, the urge to attack has been released — so attack rarely follows. And when a chimp goes straight to attacking, it's skipping the venting step. The two behaviors are substitutes, which explains why they almost never co-occur.
Skill tested: Paradox · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
80%
No Distinction2% picked this
Threat gestures and physical attacks are not the only means by which
This says there are other means of displaying aggression beyond threats and attacks. But that doesn't explain why these two specific behaviors almost never co-occur. Adding a third channel doesn't address why the first two are exclusive.
2%
No Distinction2% picked this
Chimpanzees often respond to other chimpanzees' threat gestures with threat gestures
This is about chimps responding to threat gestures with their own gestures. That doesn't explain why threat gestures and physical attacks almost never co-occur in the same chimp. The answer addresses chimp-to-chimp interaction, not the puzzling exclusivity of the two behaviors.
2%
Restates Paradox13% picked this
The chimpanzees that most often make threat gestures are the ones that least often
This essentially restates one half of the puzzle (gesturers attack less, attackers gesture less) without explaining why. We're told the gesturers are different chimps from the attackers, but we still don't know why these behaviors don't co-occur in any individual chimp.
13%

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