Passage II

Meerkats (Suricata suricatta) are mammals that typically live in groups of 2 to 30 individuals. Some group members called helpers, help parents care for their pups. Figure 1 shows how the percent contribution to babysitting and to pupfeeding by helpers varied with the age of the helpers, as categorized in Table 1.

A helper's food intake, as measured by daily weight gain (average number of grams gained by a helper per hour during a 24 hr day), can affect its contribution to pup care. Figure 2 shows how the percent contribution to babysitting and to pupfeeding by helpers older than 1 yr varied with daily weight gain.

7. When food is scarce, meerkats may lose weight, causing them to have a negative daily weight gain. Based on Figure 2, if the percent contribution to babysitting by female helpers older than 1 yr with a daily weight gain of -2 g/hr had been calculated, it would most likely have been:

Answer and Explanation

Your Answer is

Correct Answer is A

Explanation

First of all, because the question is about babysitting, observe the first picture of figure 2. Looking at the line representing female, it is found that firstly its slope is positive, and secondly, when the abscissa is zero, its ordinate is 15; from this it can be inferred that if the abscissa takes a negative number, then the ordinate will be less than 15