SAT Writing and Language Practice Test 19

Questions 34-44 refer to the following information.

For Figs? The Chimps Aren't Chumps

Sometimes as you fall asleep, you're thinking about what to eat for breakfast the next morning. "When I get up, I'll go to the fridge. I'll have an egg, 34 a piece of toast, and a few strips of bacon while I'm making coffee." Even though you may know where your food is coming from, you plan breakfast as a way to plan the day.

Our species may have been doing this kind of breakfast planning long before refrigerators, long before our species was even our species. A team of researchers recently followed groups of chimpanzees through three periods of fruit scarcity in West Africa. 35 For a chimpanzee, every day during a fruit-poor season can be like Black Friday, where all the "shoppers" want the same hot item.

36 Why does everyone freak out during Black Friday when the deals aren't even that good? If you want to be sure to get the new, say, plasma TV, what do you have to do? Camp out in front of the store! Well, that's exactly what the researchers found the chimpanzees to do with the coveted fruits. In fruit-poor seasons, 37 the nomadic chimpanzees set up their campsites within striking distance of the ripe fruits. When the fruits were 38 "_______," or quick to disappear, the female chimpanzees set up their sleeping nests more pointedly in the direction of the fruit 39 than the fruit was plentiful. Moreover, in order to ensure that the fruit supply would not be 40 gobbled by the time the chimps got there, they woke up early, often before sunrise, when the forests were still dark.

The findings about the chimp 41 has led scientists to reopen a number of heated questions. The first has to do with animals' existence outside the present moment: how much do they remember, and how much do they plan? In other words, is "consciousness" really only 42 the province of humans? The other set of questions has to do with the lines of evolution. It has been firmly established that chimpanzees are our evolutionary ancestors, but now we have to wonder if we've inherited even more 43 than we thought from them initially. Have the lives of chimpanzees conditioned the small, day-to-day patterns of our own lives?

While such questions may seem purely academic and conceptual, they actually have a good deal to do with our lived experience. We learn more and more about what we share with other 44 animals and with each discovery, we learn a new way to relate to the world around us.