LR Question 20 Explanation
QUESTION TEXT: Antarctic seals dive to great depths and stay…
QUESTION TYPE: Strengthen – Exception
CONCLUSION: Some researchers say that Antarctic seals store oxygen in their spleens.
REASONING: No specific reason is given, apart from the fact that seals must store oxygen on long dives.
ANALYSIS: A lot of the wrong answers provide pretty weak support. But any support at all is enough to strengthen an argument.
B is the weakest answer because it doesn’t specify that Antarctic seals can store oxygen in muscles. Further, there’s no evidence that storing oxygen in muscles lets seals store oxygen in the spleen.
___________
- This shows that it possible for an animal to store oxygen in their spleen.
- CORRECT. First, this doesn’t tell us that Antarctic seals can do the same. Second, muscle tissue isn’t the spleen, and it increased muscle tissue storage doesn’t indicate that the spleen can store oxygen.
- This shows that Antarctic seals must store oxygen somewhere. Perhaps in the spleen.
- This shows that the spleen may have a special function in Antarctic seals. And it seems related to dives.
- Blood vessels allow oxygen to be used. So extra blood vessels in the spleen could show that oxygen was being stored there.
More Resources for Strengthen Questions
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I am failing to see why B is much better than A. A is literally talking about horses, while B is at least talking about seals. Maybe it is a tiny bit more vague because it also has the discrepancy of muscle tissue versus the spleen, but showing you can store the blood in other parts of the body sounds no worse to me than comparing a horse to a seal.
Horses and seals are both mammals. So if one mammal can store oxygenated blood in their spleens then that supports the idea that seals also can. The LSAT expects you to use reasonable outside knowledge such that mammals and spleens are similar across species.
The problem with B is that it says “many species of seal”. This doesn’t need to refer to antarctic seals. It’s possible that antarctic seals can’t do this, so then what would B prove?
Note: This is an old comment but I wanted to clarify the point.
I’m still very confused by this. If the point is that for mammals, spleens are similar across the board, then the point in B, that some seals can store oxygen in their blood tissue, would be equally as valid, would it not?
Yes, horses being similar to seals in that they’re mammals gives them some commonality, but “Many species of seals,” would also classify these seals as mammals, so the commonality of being a mammal exists in both A and B.
B doesn’t explicitly state that Arctic seals are a part of this group (the group of seals who can store oxygen in muscle tissue), but A also doesn’t state that Arctic seals are a part of this group (this group being horses).
So once again, I’m confused, as for the argument in A to work, you need to assume that mammals have similar functionalities within the spleen. You can make that same assumption for B, and they both become valid.
>to assume that mammals have similar functionalities within the spleen.
Not quite. The dictionary defines spleen: “abdominal organ involved in the production and removal of blood cells in most vertebrates”
All invertebrates with a spleen share the basic functions. Anything that’s in the dictionary isn’t an assumption.
What does A add to this? It shows that spleens are capable of doing exactly what the argument proposed
At minimum this rules out the scenario where it is impossible for a spleen to do what the researchers hypothesize. That is directly helpful. And it’s really not a stretch to assume that if an organ has a function in one mammal it has a good chance of having that function in another. The lsat requires you to use commonsense assumptions, and self similarity among organs of related animals is basic biology.
What is also basic biology is that the spleen is not a muscle. Muscle tissue can’t tell us anything about the spleen. Indeed oxygen in the muscle is an alternative to storing oxygen in the spleen. Plausibly this weakens the argument.
So B requires assuming:
1. That the many seals includes antarctic seals or at least this info applies to them
2. That muscle oxygen isn’t an alternative to spleen oxygen
3. That the spleen can also do what muscles do despite having a completely different biological function from the spleen
Hope that helps. This is a hard question and it helps illustrate what is and isn’t reasonable to assume (or know) about the material the lsat presents.
The spleen is a real organ, we all have one and the lsat actually expects you to know the rough definition of spleen (“it is an organ. It is not muscle”) and basic biology such as “What’s true in one mammal’s organ is often true of another mammal’s identical organ”). That is in fact part of the broad definition of mammal: they are similar in many ways.