ShmoopTube

00:04

The ants go shmooping two by two hurrah, hurrah...

00:10

Ants alive! It's time to pause and review the passage again!

00:14

Sorry to be such a... pest...

00:31

Which of the following statements can the scientists conclude from the experiment?

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And here are the potential options...

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So here's where we combine all of the information we learned from the passage and experiment...

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...and decide what we've learned.

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Well, first of all...the conclusion has to be true.

00:46

The ants were NOT the most effective at bringing leaves to the nest

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on the first day...so option A is out.

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The passage also didn't say anything about relying on each other to forage leaves.

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Teamwork, sure, but ants aren't as lazy as most of us... and will actually do their own work.

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So we can cross off option C.

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A conclusion also has to be an interpretation of what we learned from the experiment,

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not just a restatement of the data.

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Option D says that ants used pheromones to guide themselves back on days 3 and 4, but

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anyone can see that from the graph.

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We want a conclusion that requires deduction, reasoning, inferences...

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all of the good stuff that science teachers love.

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Option B is a statement that answers the original question of the experiment: can the ants get

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back to their nest using a different path?

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And our conclusion, deduced from hours and hours of research and hundreds of falling

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ants is well...yes they can!

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Over time, the ants learned how to return to their nests by a different route from which they came.

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So option B's the answer.

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Sorry to throw "bees" into the mix...

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