Logical ReasoningDifficulty: Easy

PT148 S4 Q7 Explanation

Although some animals exhibit

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

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Stimulus

Although some animals exhibit a mild skin reaction to urushiol, an oil produced by plants such as poison oak and poison ivy, it appears that only humans develop painful rashes from touching it. In fact, wood rats even use branches from the poison oak plant not evolve in these plants as a chemical defense.

What this question is testing

Strengthen

Your task

Find the choice that makes the argument's conclusion more likely to be true.

Common trap

Answers that are consistent with the argument but add no real support, or that strengthen a claim the argument doesn't make.

Winning move

Locate the gap between evidence and conclusion, then pick the choice that closes it.

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

The question
7.

Which one of the following, if true, adds the most support for the conclusion

Answer choices

  1. Weakens, if anything3% picked this

    Wood rats build their nests using dead, brittle branches, not

    The author was saying, "You can tell that urushiol isn't meant to be a turn-off to animals, because wood rats build their nests out of it. Clearly, they aren't turned-off by it." But if we learn that the nests are build from dead branches of the plants, it's possible that the chemical irritant isn't there anymore. Thus, the animal might well be turn-off by the chemical, which goes against the argument.

  2. Correct85% picked this

    A number of different animals use poison oak and poison ivy

    Why this is right

    This adds plausibility to the idea that urushiol is not meant to be offensive to other animals: - only humans are bothered by it - wood rats use it to build their nests - a bunch of animals straight up eat the stuff!

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

  3. Weakens, if anything5% picked this

    It is common for plants to defend themselves by producing

    Saying that lots of plants defend themselves with chemical substances goes the wrong way from this author, who is saying "these plants are not using their chemical substance to defend themselves".

  4. No Impact1% picked this

    In approximately 85 percent of the human population, very small amounts of urushiol can

    We have no interest in any more information about what urushiol does to humans. We already know that humans are affected. The mystery of the argument resides in whether urushiol is used to turn-off any other animals.

  5. No Impact6% picked this

    Poison oak and poison ivy grow particularly well in places where humans have altered

    Learning that these plants happen to grow well in certain ecosystems that humans have altered doesn't tell us anything about why they evolved urushiol. Traits take thousands of years to evolve, so the evolutionary cause of urushiol has nothing to do with anything humans have done in the past few centuries.

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