CAT 2024 Slot 1 VARC Question & Solution
Passage
The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.
Landing in Australia, the British colonists weren’t much impressed with the small-bodied, slender-snooted marsupials called bandicoots. “Their muzzle, which is much too long, gives them an air exceedingly stupid,” one naturalist noted in 1805. They nicknamed one type the “zebra rat” because of its black-striped rump.
Silly-looking or not, though, the zebra rat—the smallest bandicoot, more commonly known today as the western barred bandicoot—exhibited a genius for survival in the harsh outback, where its ancestors had persisted for some 26 million years. Its births were triggered by rainfall in the bone-dry desert. It carried its breath-mint-size babies in a backward-facing pouch so mothers could forage for food and dig shallow, camouflaged shelters.
Still, these adaptations did not prepare the western barred bandicoot for the colonial-era transformation of its ecosystem, particularly the onslaught of imported British animals, from cattle and rabbits that damaged delicate desert vegetation to ravenous house cats that soon developed a taste for bandicoots. Several of the dozen-odd bandicoot species went extinct, and by the 1940s the western barred bandicoot, whose original range stretched across much of the continent, persisted only on two predator-free islands in Shark Bay, off Australia’s western coast.
“Our isolated fauna had simply not been exposed to these predators,” says Reece Pedler, an ecologist with the Wild Deserts conservation program.
Now Wild Deserts is using descendants of those few thousand island survivors, called Shark Bay bandicoots, in a new effort to seed a mainland bandicoot revival. They’ve imported 20 bandicoots to a preserve on the edge of the Strzelecki Desert, in the remote interior of New South Wales. This sanctuary is a challenging place, desolate much of the year, with one of the world’s most mercurial rainfall patterns—relentless droughts followed by sudden drenching floods.
The imported bandicoots occupy two fenced “exclosures,” cleared of invasive rabbits (courtesy of Pedler’s sheepdog) and of feral cats (which slunk off once the rabbits disappeared). A third fenced area contains the program’s Wild Training Zone, where two other rare marsupials (bilbies, a larger type of bandicoot, and mulgaras, a somewhat fearsome fuzzball known for sucking the brains out of prey) currently share terrain with controlled numbers of cats, learning to evade them. It’s unclear whether the Shark Bay bandicoots, which are perhaps even more predator-naive than their now-extinct mainland bandicoot kin, will be able to make that kind of breakthrough.
For now, though, a recent surge of rainfall has led to a bandicoot joey boom, raising the Wild Deserts population to about 100, with other sanctuaries adding to that number. There are also signs of rebirth in the landscape itself. With their constant digging, the bandicoots trap moisture and allow for seed germination so the cattle-damaged desert can restore itself.
They have a new nickname—a flattering one, this time. “We call them ecosystem engineers,” Pedler says.
Question 1
According to the text, the western barred bandicoots now have a flattering name because they have
Solution:
Option A is the correct answer.
The passage mentions how bandicoots contribute to the ecosystem by digging, which traps moisture and aids in seed germination. This activity helps restore the desert ecosystem damaged by cattle. Their role as "ecosystem engineers" stems from these positive environmental impacts.
Option B: Although efforts to preserve the bandicoot species are ongoing, the passage does not link their new nickname to these efforts. The name "ecosystem engineers" specifically reflects their environmental contributions rather than conservation measures.
Option C: While the passage mentions a population increase due to rainfall, the new nickname is unrelated to this growth. Instead, it is tied to their environmental engineering role.
Option D: This is a wrong interpretation because there is no mention in the passage of the bandicoots affecting rainfall.
Question 2
Which one of the following options does NOT represent the characteristics of the western barred bandicoot?
Solution:
Option B is the correct answer.
The passage does not mention the bandicoots' use of camouflage as a survival technique. While their shelters may be camouflaged (hidden), the bandicoots themselves are not described as using camouflage directly.
Option A: This is correct. The passage mentions their long, slender snouts and their digging behaviour, which allows them to create shallow shelters in the desert.
Option C: This is correct. The nickname "zebra rat" comes from their appearance, and their slender snout and backward-facing pouch for carrying joeys are described in the passage.
Option D: This is also correct. The passage mentions these features as characteristics of the western barred bandicoot.
Question 3
The text uses the word ‘exclosures’ because Wild Deserts has adopted a measure of
Solution:
Option D is the correct answer.
The 'exclosures' are mentioned as fenced areas cleared of invasive rabbits and feral cats. The term "exclosures" points to the intentional exclusion of these invasive species to create a safe environment for the bandicoots and other native animals.
Option A: While the bandicoots help in restoring the cattle damaged landscape, the term 'exclosure' does not relate to it.
Option B: The exclosures are cleared of feral cats, but the passage does not mention removing large bilbies, which are actually part of the controlled environment. The exclosures themselves are specifically to protect the bandicoots from cats and rabbits, not bilbies.
Option C: The exclosures are not about making an area entirely predator-free for all species. Instead, the purpose is to create controlled environments where invasive species like rabbits and feral cats are removed. Predators are still present in the Wild Training Zone, where bandicoots and other marsupials learn to coexist and evade predators.
Question 4
Which one of the following statements provides a gist of this passage?
Solution:
Option D is the correct answer.
Option D captures the main idea of the passage. It reflects the near-extinction of the western barred bandicoot due to invasive species and highlights the conservation efforts using survivors from Shark Bay islands.
Option A: This is not entirely true. The western barred bandicoot did not go extinct; instead, it survived in small numbers on two predator-free islands. This option incorrectly asserts total extinction and ignores the ongoing efforts to revive the species.
Option B: This is a distortion. While the colonists' negligence and the nicknames they gave reflect their disregard, the passage clearly attributes the near-extinction of bandicoots to ecological disruptions caused by invasive species, not merely the colonists' attitudes.
Option C: This generalizes the issue and does not focus specifically on the western barred bandicoot, the subject of the passage. Furthermore, it does not highlight the rescue efforts which are central to the passage.