#2 - Leatherbacks, the largest of the sea turtles, when subjected to the conditions of captivity

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Resolve the Paradox. The correct answer choice is (C).

Answer choice (A):

Answer choice (B):

Answer choice (C): This is the correct answer choice.

Answer choice (D):

Answer choice (E):

This explanation is still in progress. Please post any questions below!

[npant120]

Hello,

I got this question correct by eliminating the other answers because they didn't make sense to me, but I honestly don't fully understand how C resolves the paradox in the stimulus. Could someone explain this? The only thing I could think of is that if leatherbacks are killed by diseases in captivity, but mostly killed by threats other than diseases in the wild (aka predators), then somehow these threats are equivalent, but even that doesn't seem like a complete explanation to me. Any help understanding this would be appreciated!

[Robert Carroll]

npant120,

You're completely on the right track! Diseases are worse for captive turtles, so captive turtles are going to face a larger burden with respect to diseases. Yet they're living about as long as wild turtles...how can that be? If captive turtles suffer less from some other cause, that can balance out the increased suffering from the disease cause. So it's a tradeoff - a captive turtle dies less from predators and more from diseases, so the net effect is a balancing out.

Robert Carroll