Tough SC

varun007 · Posted: Sat Aug 30, 2008 8:33 am Post subject: Tough SC

Used by many natural history museum curators in the preparation of animal skeletons for display, dermestid beetles feed on the decaying flesh of animal carcasses, pulling with its mouthparts to strip the bone of any residual fat or muscle tissue.
1. dermestid beetles feed on the decaying flesh of animal carcasses, pulling
2. dermestid beetles feed on the decaying flesh of animal carcasses and pull
3. the dermestid beetle feeds on the decaying flesh of animal carcasses and pulls
4. the dermestid beetle feeds on the decaying flesh of animal carcasses, pulling
5. the dermestid beetle feeds on the decaying flesh of animal carcasses and it pulls

pls can somwbody explain in detail

ReenaMo · Posted: Sat Aug 30, 2008 9:44 am Post subject:

I would go with (C) for the following reasons:

(i) "with its mouth parts implies you're talking about "the dermestid beetle" vs "dermestid beetles" (so you can knock out choices A & B)
(ii) E gets knocked out because it seems wordy to say "and it pulls"
(iii) parallelism with the verb "feeds" and "pulls" (vs. pulling) can be found in choice C

What's the correct answer?

blue_lotus · Posted: Sat Aug 30, 2008 12:16 pm Post subject:

As ReenaMo Mentioned the first split we can make is between
"dermestid beetles" and "the dermestid beetle".

The non underlined part of the sentence uses the pronoun `its`,
this gives us the clue that the referent is a singular , that is " the dermestid beetle"

We can safely eliminate option A and B.

Second thing to look out for is the coma and the modifier following it.
In this case the modifier pulling is correct as it descibes HOW the action performed on the decaying flesh.

Therefore the correct answer should be D.

If we consider option C , it means that the beetle feeds and also pulls. two different things. But the sentence implies that pulling is a result happening due to feeding.

Option D provides clarity in meaning.

Ans : D

jessica.ng1988 · Posted: Sat Aug 30, 2008 10:03 pm Post subject:

IMO:D

raunekk · Posted: Sun Aug 31, 2008 12:40 am Post subject:

imo:D