GMAT Reading Comprehension
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Source: OG11th
Level: 3
Australian researchers have discovered electroreceptors (sensory organs designed to respond to electrical fields) clustered at the tip of the spiny anteater's snout. The researchers made this discovery by exposing small areas of the snout to extremely weak electrical fields and recording the transmission of resulting nervous activity to the brain. While it is true that tactile receptors, another kind of sensory organ on the anteater's snout, can also respond to electrical stimuli, such receptors do so only in response to electrical field strengths about 1,000 times greater than those known to excite electroreceptors.
Having discovered the electroreceptors, researchers are now investigating how anteaters utilize such a sophisticated sensory system. In one behavioral experiment, researchers successfully trained an anteater to distinguish between two troughs of water, one with a weak electrical field and the other with none. Such evidence is consistent with researchers' hypothesis that anteaters use electroreceptors to detect electrical signals given off by prey; however, researchers as yet have been unable to detect electrical signals emanating from termite mounds, where the favorite food of anteaters live. Still, researchers have observed anteaters breaking into a nest of ants at an oblique angle and quickly locating nesting chambers. This ability to quickly locate unseen prey suggests, according to the researchers, that the anteaters were using their electroreceptors to locate the nesting chambers.
The passage suggests that the researchers mentioned in the second paragraph who observed anteaters break into a nest of ants would most likely agree with which of the following statements?
- A The event they observed provides conclusive evidence that anteaters use their electroreceptors to locate unseen prey.
- B The event they observed was atypical and may not reflect the usual hunting practices of anteaters.
- C It is likely that the anteaters located the ants' nesting chambers without the assistance of electroreceptors.
- D Anteaters possess a very simple sensory system for use in locating prey.
- E The speed with which the anteaters located their prey is greater than what might be expected on the basis of chance alone.