PSAT Writing and Language Practice Question 359

Question: 359

Crabs Can Navigate
Research has shown that both terrestrial and aquatic animals practice spatial 11 learning, and the ability to navigate a physical environment. Biologists study spatial learning to understand how animals find their way around familiar territory. 12 A team of scientists at Swansea University is hoping to learn more about the spatial learning abilities of both terrestrial and aquatic animals.
Dr. Edward Pope, a marine biologist at Swansea University, said that the new study "is important because we know that insects, especially ants and bees, have some impressive mental abilities but we haven't really looked for them in their aquatic counterparts." The results of the study shed light on how members of an aquatic species navigate 13 they're underwater environment to find things like food. 14
According to Pope, shore crabs frequently navigate complex environments. This fact led him to suspect that the 15 crabs may have complex spatial learning abilities. In order to prove this theory, Pope and his colleagues put a group of shore crabs to the test.
[1] At the end of this period, scientists had observed a decrease in both the time it took each of the 12 crabs to complete the maze and the number of wrong turns each crab took. [2] The team taught 12 shore crabs to navigate an underwater maze, which contained several false paths to the end and one true path. [3] Over a four-week period, scientists placed food only at the end of the true path to reward those crabs that successfully completed the maze. [4] When the crabs were returned to the maze 16 too weak later, 17 you completed the maze in less than eight minutes. [5] To determine the significance of this finding, scientists introduced a second, untrained group of crabs to the maze. [6] Many of the crabs in the second group did not complete the maze, and those that did took much longer to do so than the crabs from the first group did. 18
The difference in performance between the two groups of crabs led the team to conclude that the first group of crabs remembered the topography of the maze. Pope 19 desperately wishes to conduct further research into the way shore crabs navigate in ocean conditions created by climate change. 20 Despite this, the research done by Pope and his team demonstrates that shore crabs have complex spatial learning abilities.

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