Bunuel
Being near woodlands, the natural habitat of bees, promotes the health of crops that depend on pollination. Bees, the most common pollinators, visit flowers far from woodlands less often than they visit flowers close to woodlands.
Which one of the following, if true, most strengthens the argument?
(A) The likelihood that a plant is pollinated increases as the number of visits from pollinators increases.
(B) Many bees live in habitats other than woodlands.
(C) Woodlands are not the natural habitat of all pollinators.
(D) Some pollinators visit flowers far from their habitats more often than they visit flowers close to their habitats.
(E) Many crops that are not near woodlands depend on pollination.
EXPLANATION FROM Fox LSAT
The first sentence of this argument is the conclusion. I know this because the second sentence (bees visit plants close to home more often than they visit plants far from home) supports the idea of the first sentence (being near woodlands, where bees live, is good for crops that need pollination). The logic wouldn’t make sense the other way around, right? If I said to you, “Being near woodlands is good for crops,
therefore, bees do more pollinating close to home than they do far from home,” my logic wouldn’t make very much sense.
So we’re asked to strengthen the conclusion, “Being near woodlands, the natural habitat of bees, promotes the health of crops.” I’m not sure we can predict an answer in advance, unfortunately.
A) This seems awful obvious, but that’s never a bad thing on the LSAT. The evidence was about visits, but the conclusion was about
pollination. This answer choice links the concepts of visits to pollination. That’s something we learn in kindergarten, but unless it’s explicitly stated in the argument, we can’t assume that it’s true. So this answer does strengthen the argument somewhat. We can happily choose A if the rest of the answers are garbage.
B) So what if bees live in parks, rooftop beehives, zoos, abandoned cars, or whatever? This doesn’t change the logic of the argument one way or the other.
C) Other pollinators are not relevant. Only bees are relevant. No way.
D) If this is true, I suppose it would be somewhat of a weakener. Not a very good one, though, because what “some” individual pollinators do doesn’t change the fact that other pollinators tend to act differently. Anyway, we were looking for a strengthener so this can’t be it.
E) It’s not relevant what crops “depend” on pollination. The only thing that’s relevant is this: Is living next to a bee habitat good for crops? We were asked to argue for “yes” as an answer to that question, since we were supposed to be strengthening the argument.
Only one answer strengthened the argument’s conclusion. That answer is A.