Many animals, including humans, must sleep, and sleep is known to have a role in everything from healing injuries to...
GMAT Information and Ideas : (Ideas) Questions
Many animals, including humans, must sleep, and sleep is known to have a role in everything from healing injuries to encoding information in long-term memory. But some scientists claim that, from an evolutionary standpoint, deep sleep for hours at a time leaves an animal so vulnerable that the known benefits of sleeping seem insufficient to explain why it became so widespread in the animal kingdom. These scientists therefore imply that ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
Step 1: Decode and Map the Passage
Create Passage Analysis Table
| Text from Passage | Analysis |
|---|---|
| "Many animals, including humans, must sleep, and sleep is known to have a role in everything from healing injuries to encoding information in long-term memory." |
|
| "But some scientists claim that, from an evolutionary standpoint, deep sleep for hours at a time leaves an animal so vulnerable that the known benefits of sleeping seem insufficient to explain why it became so widespread in the animal kingdom." |
|
| "These scientists therefore imply that ______" |
|
Provide Passage Architecture & Core Elements
Main Point: Some scientists believe the known benefits of sleep are insufficient to justify its evolutionary persistence given its risks, implying there must be additional explanations.
Argument Flow: The passage starts by acknowledging sleep's established benefits, then introduces scientists who argue these benefits alone cannot explain why such a risky behavior evolved so widely, leading to their logical implication about what must be true.
Step 2: Interpret the Question Precisely
This is a fill-in-the-blank question asking us to choose the best logical connector. The answer must create the right relationship between what comes before and after the blank.
Step 3: Prethink the Answer
- The scientists' logic: If deep sleep is so risky, and the known benefits are not enough to justify why it evolved and spread throughout the animal kingdom, then there must be something we are missing
- The only way their argument makes sense is if they believe sleep provides additional advantages that we have not discovered yet
- So the right answer should suggest that sleep has undiscovered benefits that would explain why evolution favored this risky behavior
- This directly follows the scientists' logic - if known benefits are insufficient, there must be unknown benefits
- Matches our prethinking perfectly
- Makes a broad claim about most traits being hard to understand evolutionarily
- The scientists are not making a general statement about evolutionary understanding
- Suggests understanding prevalence is more important than understanding function
- The scientists are not prioritizing what is more important to study
- States the obvious fact that beneficial traits can also pose risks
- This does not address the scientists' specific concern that known benefits are insufficient