An unscrupulous dog breeder has been selecting for dogs that have very large litters, with the goal of maximizing profits. Why might this strategy be counterproductive?

Question

A.  It will cost too much money to feed all those puppies.
B.  Litter size is not influenced by genetics.
C.  The puppies from large litters are likely to be malnourished, and the mother will have few resources to devote to future litters.
D.  Intrauterine cannibalism will reduce the number of puppies.


Clarify question:
What is the key concept addressed by the question?

What type of thinking is required?


Gather Content:
What do you already know about the risks versus benefits of producing a large little of puppies? What other information is related to the question? 

Choose Answer:
Given what you now know, what information is most likely to produce the correct answer?


Reflection on Process:
Did your problem-solving process lead you to the correct answer? If not, where did the process break down or lead you astray? How can you revise your approach to produce a more desirable result?

Answer 1

C.  The puppies from large litters are likely to be malnourished, and the mother will have few resources to devote to future litters.

Clarify question:
What is the key concept addressed by the question?
In this question you will need to figure out why produce a large litter of puppies maybe counterproductive to the goal of having lots of puppies to sell.

What type of thinking is required?
This is an analysis question, you will need to break the question down into its components in order to get to the answer. 


Gather Content:
What do you already know about the risks versus benefits of producing a large little of puppies? What other information is related to the question? 
What would happen if the dog breeder only wanted huge litters? Dogs are iteroparous, meaning that they can breed multiple times during their lifetime. If they produce one huge litter of puppies, those puppies may be of low quality and it might compromise the mother's future breeding potential.


Choose Answer:
Given what you now know, what information is most likely to produce the correct answer?
Instead of producing one large litter of low quality puppies, the strategy of procuring fewer higher quality litters over a longer period of time would probably produce the highest number of good quality puppies.


Reflection on Process:
Did your problem-solving process lead you to the correct answer? If not, where did the process break down or lead you astray? How can you revise your approach to produce a more desirable result?
Were you to select all the correct answers? The key here was to break down the question and see the trade-off between quality and quantity of offspring.