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Difficulty: EasyApplication to Analogous Situations

In the study of cooperative animal behavior, evolutionary biologists have extensively documented a phenomenon known as 'shared vigilance.' This behavior is most commonly observed in foraging species that face high predation risks in open environments. For example, in flocks of certain ground-feeding birds, the majority of the group will actively forage with their heads down, rendering them vulnerable to approaching predators. To counter this vulnerability, a few individuals will temporarily suspend their feeding and position themselves on elevated perches to act as lookouts. Because acting as a sentinel requires expending energy while simultaneously depriving the bird of crucial foraging time, the duty represents a significant individual cost. To prevent any single member from suffering a severe nutritional deficit, the flock engages in a systematic rotation of the lookout duty. This structured sharing of responsibility ensures the collective safety of the entire flock while guaranteeing that the metabolic burden of vigilance is distributed equitably among all members.

Based on the passage, which of the following scenarios accurately illustrate the underlying principle of 'shared vigilance'? (Select all that apply.)

  1. Members of a community garden take turns spending their Saturday mornings pulling weeds, ensuring the garden remains healthy without demanding too much time from any one person.Answer
  2. B
    A university hires a dedicated night watchman to patrol the campus grounds every evening so that students and faculty can feel safe sleeping in their dormitories.
  3. Parents in a neighborhood organize a carpool for school drop-offs, rotating the driving responsibility daily so that every parent saves time over the course of the week.Answer
  4. D
    A herd of grazing antelopes relies on their exceptional hearing to detect predators, instantly scattering in all directions the moment any single antelope makes a distress call.
  5. E
    A hospital employs a team of professional security guards who take turns monitoring the surveillance cameras in eight-hour shifts to ensure the safety of the patients.

Answer

The scenarios involving the community garden weeding and the neighborhood carpool accurately illustrate the principle.
The correct scenarios both perfectly mirror the passage's principle of 'shared vigilance.' In the passage, a group shares a necessary but costly task by rotating the responsibility, ensuring the group benefits without disproportionately burdening any single member. The community garden scenario illustrates this by having members rotate the tedious task of weeding. Similarly, the carpool scenario demonstrates parents rotating the time-consuming chore of driving. Both capture the core structural logic of distributed burden for mutual benefit.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the passage to abstract the core principle.
The core principle is that a group of peers cooperatively rotates a burdensome or costly task, ensuring collective benefit while preventing any single individual from bearing too much of the cost.
Application questions require stripping away the specific subject matter (birds, predators) to isolate the underlying logical structure.
2
Evaluate the community garden scenario against the principle.
Members (peers) rotate the burdensome task of weeding, yielding a shared benefit (healthy garden) without disproportionate individual cost. This is a match.
To identify if the structural relationship holds true in a new context.
3
Evaluate the night watchman and security guard scenarios.
Both involve safety, but they rely on hired individuals or professional shift work, rather than peers sharing a communal cost. These do not match.
Surface-level similarities (safety, taking turns) must be distinguished from the underlying structural logic.
4
Evaluate the carpool scenario against the principle.
Parents (peers) rotate the time-consuming chore of driving, achieving a shared benefit (getting kids to school) while minimizing individual effort. This is a match.
Another context that perfectly fits the abstracted structural relationship.
5
Evaluate the antelope scenario.
The antelopes benefit collectively, but there is no dedicated, rotated duty that comes at an individual cost. This does not match.
All elements of the principle, including the rotated individual sacrifice, must be present.

Key Concept

Identifying analogous structural relationships (shared cooperative burden)
Estimated Time:1m 30s
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Topics

Application to Analogous Situations

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