Critical Reasoning

sudi760mba wrote:Why C?

the best way to "justify" the oa here is to eliminate the other answers. this is more straightforward than on many other problems, because ALL of the wrong answers are VERY much outside the argument's scope.

(a) irrelevant, as the numbers of collared vs. uncollared rhinos are irrelevant to fertility rates (presumably measured in babies per rhino, or # of copulations required per pregnancy, or some other figure that doesn't have anything to do with the total population size).

(b) irrelevant; the argument deals only with rhinos.

(d) irrelevant; the argument deals only with FEMALE rhinos.

(e) irrelevant; the purpose of the collar doesn't affect the fertility issue. moreover, other means of tracking the rhinos lie outside the scope of the argument.

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that leaves (c).

the reason (c) matters is because the study purports to cover the differences between rhinos that have been hit with tranquilizer darts (let's call them "tranks") and those that haven't. however, the study DOESN'T directly split the rhinos into "trank" and "non-trank" groups; it splits them into "frequently recollared" and "not frequently recollared" groups.
the argument therefore depends on the assumption that "frequently recollared" is an adequate proxy for "been hit by tranks" and that "not frequently recollared" is an adequate proxy for "not been hit by tranks".
choice (c) is very much relevant to this assumption, because that association falls apart if the rhinos are getting tranked for lots of other reasons in addition to the collar issue.

but again, the wrong answers are easy pickings here, so you probably don't even need to think this much.

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the real question is whether the rhinos can pop their collars.
;)