CAT 2018 Question Paper | Verbal Slot 2

CAT Questions

This question is a slightly difficult question that appeared in CAT 2018 Question Paper Slot 2 from the white-lipped grove snails passage. This question is based on the evidences and hypotheses made in the passage. The CAT Question Paper in recent times has been avoiding specific-detail type questions, however, we can’t be sure that this type of question will not be tricky. Solve a number of questions like this as part of your CAT Online Preparation to have a good go in the RC during your CAT Exam.

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Grove snails as a whole are distributed all over Europe, but a specific variety of the snail, with a distinctive white-lipped shell, is found exclusively in Ireland and in the Pyrenees mountains that lie on the border between France and Spain. The researchers sampled a total of 423 snail specimens from 36 sites distributed across Europe, with an emphasis on gathering large numbers of the white-lipped variety. When they sequenced genes from the mitochondrial DNA of each of these snails and used algorithms to analyze the genetic diversity between them, they found that a distinct lineage (the snails with the white-lipped shells) was indeed endemic to the two very specific and distant places in question.

Explaining this is tricky. Previously, some had speculated that the strange distributions of creatures such as the white-lipped grove snails could be explained by convergent evolution—in which two populations evolve the same trait by coincidence—but the underlying genetic similarities between the two groups rules that out. Alternately, some scientists had suggested that the white-lipped variety had simply spread over the whole continent, then been wiped out everywhere besides Ireland and the Pyrenees, but the researchers say their sampling and subsequent DNA analysis eliminate that possibility too.

“If the snails naturally colonized Ireland, you would expect to find some of the same genetic type in other areas of Europe, especially Britain. We just don’t find them,” Davidson, the lead author, said in a press statement.

Moreover, if they’d gradually spread across the continent, there would be some genetic variation within the white-lipped type, because evolution would introduce variety over the thousands of years it would have taken them to spread from the Pyrenees to Ireland. That variation doesn’t exist, at least in the genes sampled. This means that rather than the organism gradually expanding its range, large populations instead were somehow moved en mass to the other location within the space of a few dozen generations, ensuring a lack of genetic variety.

“There is a very clear pattern, which is difficult to explain except by involving humans,” Davidson said. Humans, after all, colonized Ireland roughly 9,000 years ago, and the oldest fossil evidence of grove snails in Ireland dates to roughly the same era. Additionally, there is archaeological evidence of early sea trade between the ancient peoples of Spain and Ireland via the Atlantic and even evidence that humans routinely ate these types of snails before the advent of agriculture, as their burnt shells have been found in Stone Age trash heaps.

The simplest explanation, then? Boats. These snails may have inadvertently traveled on the floor of the small, coast-hugging skiffs these early humans used for travel, or they may have been intentionally carried to Ireland by the seafarers as a food source. “The highways of the past were rivers and the ocean–as the river that flanks the Pyrenees was an ancient trade route to the Atlantic, what we’re actually seeing might be the long lasting legacy of snails that hitched a ride as humans travelled from the South of France to Ireland 8,000 years ago,” Davidson said.

Question 7 : The passage outlines several hypotheses and evidence related to white-lipped grove snails to arrive at the most convincing explanation for:

1. why the white-lipped variety of grove snails were wiped out everywhere except in Ireland and the Pyrenees.
2. how the white-lipped variety of grove snails independently evolved in Ireland and the Pyrenees.
3. why the white-lipped variety of grove snails are found only in Ireland and the Pyrenees.
4. how the white-lipped variety of grove snails might have migrated from the Pyrenees to Ireland.

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Video Explanation

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Explanatory Answer

The first paragraph explains that white-lipped grove snails are “found exclusively in Ireland and in the Pyrenees mountains”. The passage examines various possible reasons for this in paragraphs 2 and 3 and rules out the possibility of these snails having existed elsewhere but wiped out (paragraph 2 : ‘...but the researchers say their sampling and subsequent analysis eliminate that possibility...’) and the possibility that convergent evolution happened (paragraph 2: ‘...but the underlying genetic similarities between the two groups rules that out’). So, options 1 and 2 are ruled out.

However, option 4 is a close contender to option 3, as the passage does conclude that the snails migrated from Pyrenees to Ireland en masse.

Nevertheless, between the two, option 3 is better. The passage outlines several hypotheses: convergent evolution, mass wipe-out and migration. These offer possible explanations as to the presence—rather than simply the migration—of white-lipped snails.

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The question is " The passage outlines several hypotheses and evidence related to white-lipped grove snails to arrive at the most convincing explanation for:"

Hence, the answer is why the white-lipped variety of grove snails are found only in Ireland and the Pyrenees.

Choice C is the correct answer.