Ring tailed lemurs are herbivores and incapable of digesting meat. However, scientists have observed ring tailed lemurs killing and eating beetles.
Which one of the following, if true, best resolves the discrepancy above?
A) Ring tailed lemurs eat only the hard shell of the beetles.
B) Ring tailed lemurs often kill beetles by accident.
C) Ring tailed lemurs do not kill beetles frequently.
D) Beetles often compete with Ring tailed lemurs for food sources.
E) Beetles are easily caught by Ring tailed lemurs.
This is a paradox question and you are looking to resolve the paradox or discrepancy. The paradox here is that despite being unable to digest meat the ring tailed lemurs are eating beetles which would seem to be meat. We are looking for an explanation for this behavior.
A) If the lemurs do not eat the meat and only eat the shell that would explain our discrepancy. They are not consuming meat, only a hard shell that may be digested by the lemur. (A) is our correct answer choice.
B) This explains why they are killing the beetles but does not address the issue of why they are eating them and so does not resolve our paradox.
C) The fact that they do not kill them frequently still does not explain why they do kill them sometimes and more so why do they eat them. We have not addressed our paradox with this answer choice.
D) Once again, this statement may explain why the lemurs kill the beetles but does not explain our paradox as to why they eat them despite being unable to digest meat.
E) The beetles may be easy to catch but if the lemurs cannot digest they meat then why are the lemurs catching and eating the beetles? This does not explain our discrepancy either.
So our correct answer and the only one that addresses the discrepancy or paradox is answer choice A. Be careful of answer choices that explain some aspect of the argument but do not address the paradox directly. A good way to avoid these common wrong answer choices is the have a clear understanding of the paradox before moving on to our answer choices. In this question we paraphrased the paradox as “despite being unable to digest meat the ring tailed lemurs are eating beetles”. With this in mind the correct answer is much easier to spot.