Sat practice Test #8 Answer Explanations

Choice A is the best answer. The previous question asks what the Venus 
flytrap gains from requiring multiple triggers before closing. The answer, 
that multiple triggers allow the plant to conserve energy, is best supported 
near the beginning of the first paragraph: “Closing its trap requires a 
huge expense of energy, and reopening the trap can take several hours, 
so Dionaea only wants to spring closed when it’s sure that the dawdling 
insect visiting its surface is large enough to be worth its time.”
Choices B, C, and D are incorrect because the cited lines don’t support 
the answer to the previous question. Instead, they describe how the hairs 
on the Venus flytrap function and how the system of multiple triggers 
works (choices B and C) and explain how the plant preserves a memory, 
as it were, that something has touched the trigger hairs (choice D).
QUESTION 45
Choice C is the best answer. The phrases “dawdling insect,” “happily 
meanders,” and “unassuming bug’s encounter” are less typical of word 
choices made in formal, scientific writing than of those made in less 
formal writing modes. Therefore, the tone that these phrases establish 
is best described as informal.
Choices A, B, and D are incorrect because the phrases establish a tone 
that is informal, not academic (choice A), melodramatic (choice B), or 
mocking (choice D).

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ANSwER ExPlANATIONS
| SAT Practice Test #8
QUESTION 46
Choice A is the best answer. The first paragraph describes the 
mechanism that prompts the Venus flytrap to close its trap. The second 
paragraph makes an analogy of each step of that mechanism to an 
aspect of short-term memory formation in humans and then poses 
questions about the precise physiological terms in which those steps 
are carried out. It can therefore be said that the discussion of short-
term memory serves to clarify the first paragraph’s explanation of what 
prompts the trap of the Venus flytrap to close.
Choice B is incorrect because it is the third paragraph, not the second, 
that discusses the function of electric charges in the Venus flytrap; 
moreover, the passage presents this function as a fact, not as a 
controversial hypothesis. Choice C is incorrect because rather than 
stressing the differences between Venus flytraps and humans, the 
analogy in the second paragraph stresses their superficial similarities. 
Choice D is incorrect because the second paragraph implies that the 
Venus flytrap’s capacity for retaining information is far from detailed: 
“something (it doesn’t know what) has touched one of its hairs.”
QUESTION 47