The energy an animal must expend to move uphill is proportional to its body weight, whereas the animal's energy outpu...

Hello, I am very confused by this question. The first premise states the energy an animal must expend to move uphill is proportional to its body weight (but it doesn’t really state the nature of this proportionality.) I surmised the following: The greater the body weight the more energy an animal must expend to move uphill. The rest of the premise states, the animal’s energy output available to perform this task is proportional to its surface area (but again it doesn’t really state the nature of this proportionality.) Here I would think a large muscular animal with a greater surface area would have more energy available to move itself (and other heavy objects as we’ve seen with pack animals, elephants, and orcas). I surmised the following: The smaller the surface area, the more energy output available to move uphill. So, if you have small body weight you need less energy to move uphill. And if you have a small surface area, you have more energy available to move uphill, according to the stimulus. But what tells us a Small ratio is preferable to a Large ratio? If a creature had a very small body weight, but a very large body (like a bird with a large wingspan) the ratio would be larger… I tried diagramming this question and I almost chose D because I thought because of the “muscle” factor, in order for the stimulus to make sense using only two factors, weight and surface area, that we would need to remove any other variables. I ended up choosing E. because it tied Energy Needed to Proportional to Surface Area, but I wasn’t really satisfied with that answer either. The correct answer of “C” is still a bit of a mystery to me. Are we saying ounces to square inches? Reading the various negations didn’t really help me in this case, and I’m still confused about how I should have approached this question. Thank you! Karen