December 2011 LSAT Section 1 Question 18

Zoologist: Every domesticated large mammal species now in existence was domesticated thousands of years ago. Since th...

shafieiava on February 19, 2020

Answer choice A

Can someone explain why answer choice A is incorrect? I thought that if not all animals had been tried to domesticate (the negation of it) then it would mean that the conclusion of the argument doesn't apply given that it states that the animals were either not domesticated because it was too difficult or not worthwhile. Am I perhaps reading the last sentence too narrowly? Thanks in advance.

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Ravi on February 19, 2020

@shafieiava,

Let's look at (A).

(A) says, "in spite of the difficulties encountered, at one time or
another people have tried to domesticate each wild large mammal
species"

Since this is a strengthen with a necessary premise question, we can
use the negation test. Negating (A), we have

There is at least one wild large mammal species that people haven't
yet tried to domesticate.

(A)'s negation doesn't wreck the argument because the argument's
premises state that people have attempted to domesticate all of the
species that are worth it. Thus, we don't have to assume that they
have tried to domesticate every single large mammal. This is why (A)
isn't a necessary premise.

Does this make sense? Let us know if you have any other questions!

JosephRocco on February 29 at 01:08AM

So, I picked the correct answer choice for this question; however, doing the Blind Review, I was also tempted to choose "D". What makes "D" wrong? I was hoping to read the explanation; however, explanations weren't given for this section.

Emil-Kunkin on March 1 at 09:58PM

Broadly, I think D is wrong because the author could agree or disagree with it. The author could think that the more useful an animal is the easier it is to domesticate it, or she could completely disagree with it. These are two independent causal explanations to her. We don't need to have a relationship between ease and use in order for the argument to work.