The eyes of the elephant seal adapt to darkness more quickly than any

The nice thing about doing practice questions is that you can't flunk! When you answer a question incorrectly you have an opportunity to do some analysis, see where you went wrong, and possibly learning something new. There's often more value in this than in simply getting the question right. So let's extract some value!

The problem with the initial sentence is that it makes an illogical comparison. Take another look at (A):


As is, the sentence seems to be suggesting that the elephant seal's eyes adjust more quickly than any other animal adjusts. That doesn't make sense. We want to compare eyes to eyes or animals to animals.

Don't fall into the trap of playing the ellipsis game and asking yourself whether the writer left out the words that would convey a more logical meaning. The GMAT can't ask us to be mind-readers. Instead, read the sentence literally and determine whether it makes sense in its current form. If it doesn't, get rid of it. If you're not sure, hang on to it.

Contrast the above with (C):

Now it's clear that the eyes of the elephant seal are being compared to those [eyes] of any other animal. This is logical and unambiguous. Even if you weren't sure about whether the construction in (A) was acceptable, you should realize that 1) a literal interpretation resulted in a problematic meaning and 2) you had to do work to create a logical sentence.

If you have a choice between one option that requires work to create a sensible meaning and another that is simple and clear on its own, simple and clear wins every time, so (C) it is.

I hope that clears things up!

MartyTargetTestPrep GMATNinja AjiteshArun

Within this question, answer choice C is definitely the best answer choice, but the explanation provided within the OG20 book doesn't seem consistent with that of another question. It says (for this question) the "it" correctly agrees with it's antecedent "elephant seal" (even though it's in a prepositional phrase and is the object of that preposition). However, for another question (https://gmatclub.com/forum/fossils-of-t ... 77781.html), within answer choice A, the OG explanation states that it" cannot refer to "Sloth" because "sloth" is the object of a preposition and not the subject of the sentence.

What's the best way to tackle situations like this?

Hello Ashutosh94,
Thank you for the PM.

In the correct answer Choice C, the use of the comma + verb-ing modifier "allowing..." is correct as it presents the result of the modified action "adapt to darkness more quickly...". Because the eyes of the elephant seal can adapt to darkness very quickly, they (eyes) allow the elephant seal to hunt efficiently under gloomy conditions. Because the eyes have this feature, they make this animal very efficient at hunting in gloomy situations. So, it is indeed the eyes that allow this seal to do something because the eyes possess this characteristic.


Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha

Hello samgyupsal,

You ask a good question.

A pronoun in a sentence MUST have just one LOGICAL antecedent. This antecedent can be positioned anywhere in the sentence. As long as the pronoun refers to its logical antecedent clearly, we need not worry about the placement of the antecedent in the sentence. So, the takeaway here is that the pronoun reference must be logical and clear. This reference is not affected by the placement of the antecedent.

Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha

Hi samgyupsal,

I've gone through that OG explanation, and I can't say that I agree with it. There are situations where we can say that a pronoun cannot (reasonably) refer to a noun inside a prepositional phrase, but this looks more like a case of ambiguity ("fossils of the arm of a sloth found in Puerto Rico... made it...") than anything else. I wouldn't go so far as to say that it is impossible for that it to refer to sloth. The best way to remove option A is to take a meaning call: exactly how did the fossils make that sloth the earliest known mammal on the Greater Antilles islands?

I have same doubt. In option "C", "it" is referring to what?
GMATExperts please advise.

Agreed Veenu21. While it is obviously intended to refer to elephant seal, it is technically an ambiguous pronoun here, since it can also refer to darkness and any other animal.

However, please note that pronoun ambiguity should not be a reason to eliminate an answer choice.

More importantly, all choices (except B and D, which anyway use the incorrect pronoun them) use the pronoun it and hence, it is a non-issue here.

Hi GMATNinja AjiteshArun egmat

What does yet tested mean? Does it mean already tested?

I sometimes use yet instead of but, but using "but" does not make sense in this context.

Hi TorGmatGod,

That is correct. Yet in this context is like ~ "till now".

I have been banging my head against the wall for comparisons for quite some time now, still super confused. Can you please help me?

(B) The eyes of the elephant seal adapt to darkness more quickly than any other animal yet tested, allowing them

I think adding a verb with other animals yet tested will make it parallel and logical,

The eyes of the elephant seal adapt to darkness more quickly than (eyes of) any other animal yet tested (adapts), allowing them
The reason why removing 'does' wont be ambiguous as the other version is pure garbage:
The eyes of the elephant seal adapt to darkness more quickly (The eyes of the elephant seal adapt to) than any other animal yet tested, allowing them

Looking from this perspective, this comparison should make sense. What am I missing?

Hello Experts,

ExpertsGlobal5 GMATNinjaTwo AjiteshArun generis KarishmaB
I have been banging my head against the wall for comparisons for quite some time now, still super confused. Can you please help me?

(B) The eyes of the elephant seal adapt to darkness more quickly than any other animal yet tested, allowing them

I think adding a verb with other animals yet tested will make it parallel and logical,

The eyes of the elephant seal adapt to darkness more quickly than (eyes of) any other animal yet tested (adapts), allowing them
The reason why removing 'does' wont be ambiguous as the other version is pure garbage:
The eyes of the elephant seal adapt to darkness more quickly (The eyes of the elephant seal adapt to) than any other animal yet tested, allowing them

Looking from this perspective, this comparison should make sense. What am I missing?

The key thing here is that as written, (B) clearly expresses an illogical comparison between "the eyes of the elephant seal" and "any other animal."

When a sentence clearly and effectively expresses an illogical comparison of two nouns, we can't call it correct by understanding it to convey something other than what it conveys.

So, in this case, we can understand "adapts" to appear in the second part of the comparison, but we can't understand the sentence to compare "the eyes of the elephant seal" with "(the eyes of) any other animal."

The point is that we must compare things that make sense. The action is being performed by the eyes.

Simplify the sentence:
The eyes of the elephant seal are better than any other animal.
What does it convey? That the eyes of an animal are better than any other animal. What we want to say is that the eyes of an animal are better than the eyes of any other animal.

Hence, we do need to write:
The eyes of the elephant seal are better than those of any other animal.

We cannot assume that obviously we must be comparing their eyes. For example, when we say "She like pizza more than Peter," does it necessarily mean that she likes pizza more than Peter likes pizza? No. What if we want to say that she likes the food pizza more than she likes her friend Peter?

Coming back to our sentence, if we change it to,
The eyes of the elephant seal adapt to darkness more quickly than those of any other animal.
Here we are comparing actions so we do understand that we comparing how quickly eyes of seals adapt to how quickly eyes of other animals adapt. I wouldn't eliminate this sentence but to clarify the action, we could write it with 'do'- the substitute for the action in the second part.

The eyes of the elephant seal adapt to darkness more quickly than do those of any other animal.

Now it is perfect and is available as option (C). It all depends on the available options - which one is to the point and best.

Hello vshr,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, in comparisons repeated verbs can be omitted for the sake of conciseness, but pronouns and nouns cannot.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team

Thanks ExpertsGlobal5,
Using the above mentioned concept, if I solve this OG questions,
Most of the country’s biggest daily newspapers had lower circulation in the six months from October 1995 through March 1996 than a similar period a year earlier.
(A) a similar period
(B) a similar period’s
(C) in a similar period
(D) that in a similar period
(E) that of a similar period

The correct answer C is omitting, 'circulation in'. Am I missing something in interpreting the rule you mentioned?

Hello vshr,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, your reasoning is not exactly correct.

You will note that Option C does not actually omit "in"; it reads "in a similar period".

Further, "circulation" is a noun, so as we explained, it cannot be omitted in a comparison.

What the sentence formed by Option C actually does is draw a comparison between the prepositional phrases "in the six months from October 1995 through March 1996" and "in a similar time period a year earlier".

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team.

Can you eliminate E because of a comma splice ? ( tested, it allows them to hunt efficiently under the gloomy conditions at its feeding depth ....)