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CAT 2025 Lesson : Verbal: Jul '25 to Aug '25 - CAT RC_POV method - 7 Aug 2025
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
[CAT 2021 Slot 1]
Cuttlefish are full of personality, as behavioral ecologist Alexandra Schnell found out while researching the cephalopod's potential to display self-control. ... “Self-control is thought to be the cornerstone of intelligence, as it is an important prerequisite for complex decision-making and planning for the future,” says Schnell. ...
[Schnell's] study used a modified version of the “marshmallow test” ... During the original marshmallow test, psychologist Walter Mischel presented children between age four and six with one marshmallow. He told them that if they waited 15 minutes and didn’t eat it, he would give them a second marshmallow. A long-term follow-up study showed that the children who waited for the second marshmallow had more success later in life. ... The cuttlefish version of the experiment looked a lot different. The researchers worked with six cuttlefish under nine months old and presented them with seafood instead of sweets. (Preliminary experiments showed that cuttlefishes’ favorite food is live grass shrimp, while raw prawns are so-so and Asian shore crab is nearly unacceptable.) Since the researchers couldn’t explain to the cuttlefish that they would need to wait for their shrimp, they trained them to recognize certain shapes that indicated when a food item would become available. The symbols were pasted on transparent drawers so that the cuttlefish could see the food that was stored inside. One drawer, labeled with a circle to mean “immediate,” held raw king prawn. Another drawer, labeled with a triangle to mean “delayed,” held live grass shrimp. During a control experiment, square labels meant “never.”
“If their self-control is flexible and I hadn’t just trained them to wait in any context, you would expect the cuttlefish to take the immediate reward [in the control], even if it’s their second preference,” says Schnell ... and that’s what they did. That showed the researchers that cuttlefish wouldn’t reject the prawns if it was the only food available. In the experimental trials, the cuttlefish didn’t jump on the prawns if the live grass shrimp were labeled with a triangle— many waited for the shrimp drawer to open up. Each time the cuttlefish showed it could wait, the researchers tacked another ten seconds on to the next round of waiting before releasing the shrimp. The longest that a cuttlefish waited was 130 seconds.
Schnell [says] that the cuttlefish usually sat at the bottom of the tank and looked at the two food items while they waited, but sometimes, they would turn away from the king prawn “as if to distract themselves from the temptation of the immediate reward.” In past studies, humans, chimpanzees, parrots and dogs also tried to distract themselves while waiting for a reward.
Not every species can use self-control, but most of the animals that can share another trait in common: long, social lives. Cuttlefish, on the other hand, are solitary creatures that don’t form relationships even with mates or young. ... “We don’t know if living in a social group is important for complex cognition unless we also show those abilities are lacking in less social species,” says ... comparative psychologist Jennifer Vonk.
1) Which one of the following, if true, would best complement the passage’s findings?
(1) Cuttlefish cannot distinguish between geometrical shapes.
(2) Cuttlefish wait longer than 100 seconds for the shrimp drawer to open up.
(3) Cuttlefish live in big groups that exhibit sociability.
(4) Cuttlefish are equally fond of live grass shrimp and raw prawn.
2) In which one of the following scenarios would the cuttlefish’s behaviour demonstrate self-control?
(1) raw prawns are released while an Asian shore crab drawer labelled with a triangle is placed in front of the cuttlefish, to be opened after one minute.
(2) raw prawns are released while a live grass shrimp drawer labelled with a square is placed in front of the cuttlefish.
(3) Asian shore crabs and raw prawns are simultaneously released while a live grass shrimp drawer labelled with a triangle is placed in front of the cuttlefish, to be opened after one minute.
(4) live grass shrimp are released while two raw prawn drawers labelled with a circle and a triangle respectively are placed in front of the cuttlefish; the triangle-labelled drawer is opened after 50 seconds.
3) All of the following constitute a point of difference between the “original” and “modified” versions of the marshmallow test EXCEPT that:
(1) the former was performed over a longer time span than the latter.
(2) the former used verbal communication with its subjects, while the latter had to develop a symbolic means of communication.
(3) the former correlated self-control and future success, while the latter correlated self- control and survival advantages.
(4) the former had human subjects, while the latter had cuttlefish.
4) Which one of the following cannot be inferred from Alexandra Schnell’s experiment?
(1) Cuttlefish exert self-control with the help of diversions.
(2) Cuttlefish exercise choice when it comes to food.
(3) Like human children, cuttlefish are capable of self-control.
(4) Intelligence in a species is impossible without sociability.
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
[CAT 2022 Slot 2]
[Octopuses are] misfits in their own extended families... They belong to the Mollusca class Cephalopoda. But they don’t look like their cousins at all. Other molluscs include sea snails, sea slugs, bivalves – most are shelled invertebrates with a dorsal foot. Cephalopods are all arms, and can be as tiny as 1 centimetre and as large at 30 feet. Some of them have brains the size of a walnut, which is large for an invertebrate. . . .
It makes sense for these molluscs to have added protection in the form of a higher cognition; they don’t have a shell covering them, and pretty much everything feeds on cephalopods, including humans. But how did cephalopods manage to secure their own invisibility cloak? Cephalopods fire from multiple cylinders to achieve this in varying degrees from species to species. There are four main catalysts – chromatophores, iridophores, papillae and leucophores. . . .
[Chromatophores] are organs on their bodies that contain pigment sacs, which have red, yellow and brown pigment granules. These sacs have a network of radial muscles, meaning muscles arranged in a circle radiating outwards. These are connected to the brain by a nerve. When the cephalopod wants to change colour, the brain carries an electrical impulse through the nerve to the muscles that expand outwards, pulling open the sacs to display the colours on the skin. Why these three colours? Because these are the colours the light reflects at the depths they live in (the rest is absorbed before it reaches those depths). . . .
Well, what about other colours? Cue the iridophores. Think of a second level of skin that has thin stacks of cells. These can reflect light back at different wavelengths.... It’s using the same properties that we’ve seen in hologram stickers, or rainbows on puddles of oil. You move your head and you see a different colour. The sticker isn’t doing anything but reflecting light – it’s your movement that’s changing the appearance of the colour. This property of holograms, oil and other such surfaces is called “iridescence”. . . .
Papillae are sections of the skin that can be deformed to make a texture bumpy. Even humans possess them (goosebumps) but cannot use them in the manner that cephalopods can. For instance, the use of these cells is how an octopus can wrap itself over a rock and appear jagged or how a squid or cuttlefish can imitate the look of a coral reef by growing miniature towers on its skin. It actually matches the texture of the substrate it chooses.
Finally, the leucophores: According to a paper, published in Nature, cuttlefish and octopuses possess an additional type of reflector cell called a leucophore. They are cells that scatter full spectrum light so that they appear white in a similar way that a polar bear’s fur appears white. Leucophores will also reflect any filtered light shown on them... If the water appears blue at a certain depth, the octopuses and cuttlefish can appear blue; if the water appears green, they appear green, and so on and so forth.
5) All of the following are reasons for octopuses being “misfits” EXCEPT that they:
(1) have several arms.
(2) are consumed by humans and other animals.
(3) do not possess an outer protective shell.
(4) exhibit higher intelligence than other molluscs.
6) Which one of the following statements is not true about the camouflaging ability of Cephalopods?
(1) Cephalopods can blend into the colour of their surroundings.
(2) Cephalopods can take on the colour of their predator.
(3) Cephalopods can change their texture.
(4) Cephalopods can change their colour.
7) Based on the passage, it can be inferred that camouflaging techniques in an octopus are most dissimilar to those in:
(1) cuttlefish
(2) sea snails
(3) squids
(4) polar bears
8) Based on the passage, we can infer that all of the following statements, if true, would weaken the camouflaging adeptness of Cephalopods EXCEPT:
(1) the temperature of water at the depths at which Cephalopods reside renders the transmission of neural signals difficult.
(2) the hydrostatic pressure at the depths at which Cephalopods reside renders radial muscle movements difficult.
(3) the number of chromatophores in Cephalopods is half the number of iridophores and leucophores.
(4) light reflects the colours red, green, and yellow at the depths at which Cephalopods reside.
[CAT 2021 Slot 1]
Cuttlefish are full of personality, as behavioral ecologist Alexandra Schnell found out while researching the cephalopod's potential to display self-control. ... “Self-control is thought to be the cornerstone of intelligence, as it is an important prerequisite for complex decision-making and planning for the future,” says Schnell. ...
[Schnell's] study used a modified version of the “marshmallow test” ... During the original marshmallow test, psychologist Walter Mischel presented children between age four and six with one marshmallow. He told them that if they waited 15 minutes and didn’t eat it, he would give them a second marshmallow. A long-term follow-up study showed that the children who waited for the second marshmallow had more success later in life. ... The cuttlefish version of the experiment looked a lot different. The researchers worked with six cuttlefish under nine months old and presented them with seafood instead of sweets. (Preliminary experiments showed that cuttlefishes’ favorite food is live grass shrimp, while raw prawns are so-so and Asian shore crab is nearly unacceptable.) Since the researchers couldn’t explain to the cuttlefish that they would need to wait for their shrimp, they trained them to recognize certain shapes that indicated when a food item would become available. The symbols were pasted on transparent drawers so that the cuttlefish could see the food that was stored inside. One drawer, labeled with a circle to mean “immediate,” held raw king prawn. Another drawer, labeled with a triangle to mean “delayed,” held live grass shrimp. During a control experiment, square labels meant “never.”
“If their self-control is flexible and I hadn’t just trained them to wait in any context, you would expect the cuttlefish to take the immediate reward [in the control], even if it’s their second preference,” says Schnell ... and that’s what they did. That showed the researchers that cuttlefish wouldn’t reject the prawns if it was the only food available. In the experimental trials, the cuttlefish didn’t jump on the prawns if the live grass shrimp were labeled with a triangle— many waited for the shrimp drawer to open up. Each time the cuttlefish showed it could wait, the researchers tacked another ten seconds on to the next round of waiting before releasing the shrimp. The longest that a cuttlefish waited was 130 seconds.
Schnell [says] that the cuttlefish usually sat at the bottom of the tank and looked at the two food items while they waited, but sometimes, they would turn away from the king prawn “as if to distract themselves from the temptation of the immediate reward.” In past studies, humans, chimpanzees, parrots and dogs also tried to distract themselves while waiting for a reward.
Not every species can use self-control, but most of the animals that can share another trait in common: long, social lives. Cuttlefish, on the other hand, are solitary creatures that don’t form relationships even with mates or young. ... “We don’t know if living in a social group is important for complex cognition unless we also show those abilities are lacking in less social species,” says ... comparative psychologist Jennifer Vonk.
1) Which one of the following, if true, would best complement the passage’s findings?
(1) Cuttlefish cannot distinguish between geometrical shapes.
(2) Cuttlefish wait longer than 100 seconds for the shrimp drawer to open up.
(3) Cuttlefish live in big groups that exhibit sociability.
(4) Cuttlefish are equally fond of live grass shrimp and raw prawn.
2) In which one of the following scenarios would the cuttlefish’s behaviour demonstrate self-control?
(1) raw prawns are released while an Asian shore crab drawer labelled with a triangle is placed in front of the cuttlefish, to be opened after one minute.
(2) raw prawns are released while a live grass shrimp drawer labelled with a square is placed in front of the cuttlefish.
(3) Asian shore crabs and raw prawns are simultaneously released while a live grass shrimp drawer labelled with a triangle is placed in front of the cuttlefish, to be opened after one minute.
(4) live grass shrimp are released while two raw prawn drawers labelled with a circle and a triangle respectively are placed in front of the cuttlefish; the triangle-labelled drawer is opened after 50 seconds.
3) All of the following constitute a point of difference between the “original” and “modified” versions of the marshmallow test EXCEPT that:
(1) the former was performed over a longer time span than the latter.
(2) the former used verbal communication with its subjects, while the latter had to develop a symbolic means of communication.
(3) the former correlated self-control and future success, while the latter correlated self- control and survival advantages.
(4) the former had human subjects, while the latter had cuttlefish.
4) Which one of the following cannot be inferred from Alexandra Schnell’s experiment?
(1) Cuttlefish exert self-control with the help of diversions.
(2) Cuttlefish exercise choice when it comes to food.
(3) Like human children, cuttlefish are capable of self-control.
(4) Intelligence in a species is impossible without sociability.
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
[CAT 2022 Slot 2]
[Octopuses are] misfits in their own extended families... They belong to the Mollusca class Cephalopoda. But they don’t look like their cousins at all. Other molluscs include sea snails, sea slugs, bivalves – most are shelled invertebrates with a dorsal foot. Cephalopods are all arms, and can be as tiny as 1 centimetre and as large at 30 feet. Some of them have brains the size of a walnut, which is large for an invertebrate. . . .
It makes sense for these molluscs to have added protection in the form of a higher cognition; they don’t have a shell covering them, and pretty much everything feeds on cephalopods, including humans. But how did cephalopods manage to secure their own invisibility cloak? Cephalopods fire from multiple cylinders to achieve this in varying degrees from species to species. There are four main catalysts – chromatophores, iridophores, papillae and leucophores. . . .
[Chromatophores] are organs on their bodies that contain pigment sacs, which have red, yellow and brown pigment granules. These sacs have a network of radial muscles, meaning muscles arranged in a circle radiating outwards. These are connected to the brain by a nerve. When the cephalopod wants to change colour, the brain carries an electrical impulse through the nerve to the muscles that expand outwards, pulling open the sacs to display the colours on the skin. Why these three colours? Because these are the colours the light reflects at the depths they live in (the rest is absorbed before it reaches those depths). . . .
Well, what about other colours? Cue the iridophores. Think of a second level of skin that has thin stacks of cells. These can reflect light back at different wavelengths.... It’s using the same properties that we’ve seen in hologram stickers, or rainbows on puddles of oil. You move your head and you see a different colour. The sticker isn’t doing anything but reflecting light – it’s your movement that’s changing the appearance of the colour. This property of holograms, oil and other such surfaces is called “iridescence”. . . .
Papillae are sections of the skin that can be deformed to make a texture bumpy. Even humans possess them (goosebumps) but cannot use them in the manner that cephalopods can. For instance, the use of these cells is how an octopus can wrap itself over a rock and appear jagged or how a squid or cuttlefish can imitate the look of a coral reef by growing miniature towers on its skin. It actually matches the texture of the substrate it chooses.
Finally, the leucophores: According to a paper, published in Nature, cuttlefish and octopuses possess an additional type of reflector cell called a leucophore. They are cells that scatter full spectrum light so that they appear white in a similar way that a polar bear’s fur appears white. Leucophores will also reflect any filtered light shown on them... If the water appears blue at a certain depth, the octopuses and cuttlefish can appear blue; if the water appears green, they appear green, and so on and so forth.
5) All of the following are reasons for octopuses being “misfits” EXCEPT that they:
(1) have several arms.
(2) are consumed by humans and other animals.
(3) do not possess an outer protective shell.
(4) exhibit higher intelligence than other molluscs.
6) Which one of the following statements is not true about the camouflaging ability of Cephalopods?
(1) Cephalopods can blend into the colour of their surroundings.
(2) Cephalopods can take on the colour of their predator.
(3) Cephalopods can change their texture.
(4) Cephalopods can change their colour.
7) Based on the passage, it can be inferred that camouflaging techniques in an octopus are most dissimilar to those in:
(1) cuttlefish
(2) sea snails
(3) squids
(4) polar bears
8) Based on the passage, we can infer that all of the following statements, if true, would weaken the camouflaging adeptness of Cephalopods EXCEPT:
(1) the temperature of water at the depths at which Cephalopods reside renders the transmission of neural signals difficult.
(2) the hydrostatic pressure at the depths at which Cephalopods reside renders radial muscle movements difficult.
(3) the number of chromatophores in Cephalopods is half the number of iridophores and leucophores.
(4) light reflects the colours red, green, and yellow at the depths at which Cephalopods reside.
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