Antarctic seals dive to great depths and stay submerged for hours.

Question

Antarctic seals dive to great depths and stay submerged for hours. They do not rely solely on oxygen held in their lungs, but also store extra oxygen in their blood. Indeed, some researchers hypothesize that for long dives these seals also store oxygenated blood in their spleens.

Each of the following, if true, provides some support for the researchers' hypothesis EXCEPT:

A) Horses are known to store oxygenated blood in their spleens for use during exertion.

B) Many species of seal can store oxygen directly in their muscle tissue.

C) The oxygen contained in the seals' lungs and bloodstream alone would be inadequate to support the seals during their dives.

D) The spleen is much larger in the Antarctic seal than in aquatic mammals that do not make long dives.

E) The spleens of Antarctic seals contain greater concentrations of blood vessels than are contained in most of their other organs.

Kurtosis · Answer

Question: Strengthen Except

Researcher's hypothesis: Seals store oxygenated blood in their spleen for long dives.

A) Horses are known to store oxygenated blood in their spleens for use during exertion. - Incorrect. Supports the hypothesis that its possible to store oxygenated blood in the spleen.

B) Many species of seal can store oxygen directly in their muscle tissue. - Correct. If they can store oxygen in their muscle tissue why do they need spleen? Weakens the researcher's hypothesis.

C) The oxygen contained in the seals' lungs and bloodstream alone would be inadequate to support the seals during their dives. - Incorrect. Spleen is required to store oxygen.

D) The spleen is much larger in the Antarctic seal than in aquatic mammals that do not make long dives. - Incorrect. Supports. May be its larger to store oxygenated blood.

E) The spleens of Antarctic seals contain greater concentrations of blood vessels than are contained in most of their other organs. - Incorrect. Supports.

Answer: B

goforgmat · Answer

Each of the following, if true, provides some support for the researchers' hypothesis EXCEPT:

A) Horses are known to store oxygenated blood in their spleens for use during exertion.   Supports the contention that if horses can store there is a possibility that seals also store

B) Many species of seal can store oxygen directly in their muscle tissue.   The argument talks about Antarctic seals , while this option states many seals. Out of Scope.

C) The oxygen contained in the seals' lungs and bloodstream alone would be inadequate to support the seals during their dives.   Provides a reason for the need to store extra oxygen

D) The spleen is much larger in the Antarctic seal than in aquatic mammals that do not make long dives.   larger spleen could be for a reason perhaps to store extra oxygen

E) The spleens of Antarctic seals contain greater concentrations of blood vessels than are contained in most of their other organs.  proof that more oxygen can be stored

abhishekdadarwal2009 · Answer

Antarctic seals dive to great depths and stay submerged for hours. They do not rely solely on oxygen held in their lungs, but also store extra oxygen in their blood. Indeed, some researchers hypothesize that for long dives these seals also store oxygenated blood in their spleens.

Each of the following, if true, provides some support for the researchers' hypothesis EXCEPT:

A) Horses are known to store oxygenated blood in their spleens for use during exertion.  Provides support by analogy

B) Many species of seal can store oxygen directly in their muscle tissue.  Correct choice for except question.

C) The oxygen contained in the seals' lungs and bloodstream alone would be inadequate to support the seals during their dives.   provides the cause of such thing. thus providing support

D) The spleen is much larger in the Antarctic seal than in aquatic mammals that do not make long dives.   clarifies that the spleen is inlarged only in antarctic seal ,which makes the long dives and not other quatic mammals, thus somewhat supporting.

E) The spleens of Antarctic seals contain greater concentrations of blood vessels than are contained in most of their other organs. 
supports by giving reason to why is it stored in spleen.

GMAT0010 · Answer

Hi, Why are we comparing horses to seals? I observed that in many CR questions, the option that talks about another country,city, locality or person is usually wrong. Please help me!!

tejasvkalra · Answer

While this might be true for inference , assumption questions , we can't assume this for weaken and strengthen questions; in the latter type , even if an answer choice strengthens the answer choice by 1% , it is correct
in A , horses use spleen to help them during exertion; this might give a reason for use to believe that spleen can also be used by seals

Lucasss · Answer

Muscle tissue is different from muscle fibers, so when the answer choice refers to the whole muscle tissue it includes the blood too, in this case it would support the argument as it is simply restating a given information once again in another form.
Am I missing something here?

Posted from my mobile device

chaitralirr · Answer

The researchers hypothesis is that Seals store oxygen in spleen too along with blood and lungs. We need to find an option which supports the hypothesis that Antarctic Seals store oxygen in Spleen.

The option B provides a possible hypothesis that instead of storing oxygen in Spleen the Seals could store oxygen in muscle tissue. Hence weakens the claim.

Hope this helps

yaygmat · Answer

GMATNinja   GMATNinja Two  Bunuel   KarishmaB   MartyTargetTestPrep   carcass

Hello Experts,
In GMAT , we never base our argument based on the validity of the argument in other similar circumstances.
These are generally eliminated first. Then how can answer A be correct here? How can we just compare Antarctic seals with Horses? Can someone please shed some light?
Thanks in advance:)

raahulthakur · Answer

Hi  yaygmat , while I'm not an expert, I'll give it a shot.

Two reasons:
1.  GMATNinja  puts it well, don't generalize because the other choices might be worse. In this case, B is much worse because it talks about storing oxygen (not oxygenated blood, nitpicking but this is important) in muscles (not the spleen). So, this weakens by saying that those seals probably use muscle tissues, not their spleen, to store extra oxygen for long dives.

2. Also, eliminating choices that similarity/analogy is purely contextual. In this case, it can be shown that it is a general characteristic among mammals. For instance, what's true for rat brains in most cases is also true for human brains. So, there is some support (however weak) that those seals use spleens to store oxygenated blood.

I hope it helped you!

Thanks!

VerbalBot · Answer

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Antarctic seals dive to great depths and stay submerged for hours.

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Antarctic seals dive to great depths and stay submerged for hours.

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