Sentence Correction

A scrub jay can remember when it cached a particular piece of food in a particular place, researchers have discovered, and tend not to bother to recover a perishable treat if stored long enough to have rotted.

A. tend not to bother to recover a perishable treat if
B. they tend not to bother recovering a perishable treat
C. tending not to bother to recover a perishable treat it
D. tends not to bother recovering a perishable treat
E. tends not bothering to recover a perishable treat it

IMO D

- subject is singular thus verb should be singular - thus tends

tends not to - better than tends not bothering to

Thanks DD.

Can you please shed some light on the rule that gmat_dest wrote above(Copy pasted again below for quick reference). Probably due to this reason only it seems that it is unnecessary.

"The main reason should be that 'it' is redundant here. Scrub Jay is the subject of the sentence and "tends to...." . "

goelmohit2002 wrote:Thanks DD.

Can you please shed some light on the rule that gmat_dest wrote above(Copy pasted again below for quick reference). Probably due to this reason only it seems that it is unnecessary.

"The main reason should be that 'it' is redundant here. Scrub Jay is the subject of the sentence and "tends to...." . "

Sorry buddy. I do not understand completely as the sentence seems incomplete to me or rather I am not able to comprehend what gmat_test wanted to state.

My point is that "it" is unnecessary and not making sense there. I am sorry that in my earlier post even I wrote it as redundant. Redundant is something which you can do without and even if it's present, it just makes the sentence longer. Here "it" is not redundant, but rather unnecessary.

As I said earlier I dont know what this "it" is referring back to.. certainly its not referring to Scrub Jay. BTW, Scrub Jay is a bird. I dont know if the name is causing the confusion. Let's replace it with a common bird.. say sparrow..

A sparrow can remember when it (refers to sparrow) cached (stored) a particular piece of food in a particular place, researchers have discovered, and tends not to bother a perishable treat (treat is a noun here .. meaning food) if stored long enough to have rotted.
This is perfect.

If we take option E and reword the above.. it becomes

A sparrow can remember when it (refers to sparrow) cached (stored) a particular piece of food in a particular place, researchers have discovered, and tends not bothering to recover a perishable treat (treat is a noun here .. meaning food) it (what does this it refer to?) if stored long enough to have rotted.

And that's my point.. what does that "it" refer to? Its senseless.

netigen wrote:A scrub jay can remember when it cached a particular piece of food in a particular place, researchers have discovered, and tend not to bother to recover a perishable treat if stored long enough to have rotted.

A. tend not to bother to recover a perishable treat if
B. they tend not to bother recovering a perishable treat
C. tending not to bother to recover a perishable treat it
D. tends not to bother recovering a perishable treat
E. tends not bothering to recover a perishable treat it

@netizen!

whatz the OA?

HI

I am stuck among A,D and E. Could somebody point out the exact reasons for ruling out A and E?

A) tend not to bother to recover a perishable treat if---- This seems like a perfect sentence with a parallel structure..with [can] tend. I do not feel the need to use tends

E) tends not bothering to recover a perishable treat it---- It refers back to scrub jay..how is it w/o an antecedent?

are there any other errors in E?

EXPERTS please pitch in...

netigen wrote:A scrub jay can remember when it cached a particular piece of food in a particular place, researchers have discovered, and tend not to bother to recover a perishable treat if stored long enough to have rotted.

A. tend not to bother to recover a perishable treat if
B. they tend not to bother recovering a perishable treat
C. tending not to bother to recover a perishable treat it
D. tends not to bother recovering a perishable treat
E. tends not bothering to recover a perishable treat it

We can quickly eliminate A, B and C: "tend" is plural while "a scrub jay" is singular (goodbye A and B) and "and tending" disrupts the parallelism of the sentence (goodbye C).

On the GMAT, when we have back-to-back verbs the second is most commonly in infinitive form. For that reason alone, we should select D.

Let's ignore the "not" and examine the verb structure of D vs E:

D) "tends to bother" simple verb immediately followed by verb in infinitive form. Good!
E) "tends bothering" simple verb immediately followed by "ing" verb. Bad!