#8 - Millions of female bats rear their pups in Bracken Cave

[queenbee]

Hi
I was torn between A and C and I am not understanding why either of them are wrong.

From the earlier discussions: Answer choice (C) Since the argument does not describe the mechanism by which mothers use calls to locate their pups, this choice is wrong.

When the mothers hear their pups call, they respond to it. Isnt that the mechanism?

Also - regarding A, the bats that were being reference were only from a specific cave. So isnt the author deriving a behavior based on just those bats?

Any additional help would be appreciated.
Thanks

[Adam Tyson]

Your analysis of answer C leaves out one thing, queenbee, and that is an explanation of how the mothers recognize the call of their pups. That's what they mean by a "mechanism." A suitable mechanism would be "here's specifically how they could be doing that," and because there is a way that it could be done, the explanation is therefore possible. But since the argument did not tell us how the mothers might do this, we don't have that suitable mechanism.

As to answer A, the author is only deriving a conclusion about these bats in this cave, and it's based on the behavior of all of them, not just some of them. The author is not using the evidence from these bats to draw a conclusion about all bats.