Very sorry about that! My answer got convoluted. You mean the correct answer is (C), not (B). So let's discuss!
Answer choice (E) seems very tempting because it looks like the point of the passage. We are told that the term "pit bull" does not designate a breed of dog the way that "German shepherd" and "poodle" does. The term "pit bull" is compared to the terms "Seeing Eye dog" and "police dog," which are words that designate what dogs do as opposed to what they look like.
Answer choice (E) states: "Some breeds of dogs cannot be distinguished from other breeds of dogs by appearance alone." Answer choice (E) is tempting because it broadly mentions something discussed in the passage--some dogs, like pit bulls, cannot be distinguished by appearance alone.
But is this actually the point of the passage? We are told that the term "pit bull," is unlike the terms "German shepherd" and "poodle," (which convey a dogs breed through mere appearance) and more similar to "Seeing Eye dog" and "police dog," (which designate dogs according to what they do). We are then given an example of two German shepherds standing next to one another. We are told that if two German shepherds are placed one next to another, there is no way of determining which is the "Seeing Eye dog" and which is the "police dog," because both those terms designate what a dog does as opposed to what a dog looks like. Thus, since we know that the term "pit bull" is like the terms "Seeing Eye dog" and "police dog," we can deduce that in order to distinguish a pit bull, we must know what the dog does as opposed to what it looks like i.e. answer choice (C): A dog is a pit bull because of what it does, not because of its breed.
The passage is focused on the similarity of the term "pit bull" to the terms "Seeing Eye dog" and "police dog" in that they are terms that designate dogs by what they do, as opposed to being focused on the generality that some dogs cannot be distinguished by just how they look. The reason the speaker is saying this is to tell us something about pit bulls, as opposed to generally informing us that just looking at some dogs will not aid us in distinguishing their breed. Therefore, answer choice (C) clearly pinpoints the passage's main point.
Thanks a lot for pointing that out!
Hope this clears things up! Please let us know if you have any more questions.
kervins1914December 22, 2015
Duh because it's the main conclusion in the stimulus!
