Read Each Passage

question 7

Multiple Choice

Read each passage.Then choose the appropriate letter to indicate the presence or absence of an error in reasoning. The international trade in exotic animals is growing, and an individual can now buy anything from a baboon to a three-toed sloth to a scorpion.However, people should not adopt wild, unusual beasts to keep as pets.These animals are much too dangerous and unpredictable.Recently, police entered the apartment of a 42-year-old Delaware man and found seven Nile monitor lizards eating their owner's corpse.This incident proves that keeping wild animals as pets leads to disaster.Also, the purchase of exotic animals supports a trade that damages both the animals and their native habitats.Many exotic animals, such as tropical birds, are captured from the wild and forced into an unnatural life of captivity-that is, if they survive the trip to their destination.During capture and shipment, the mortality rate of these animals is very high.For example, as many as 60 or 70 percent of birds and reptiles die during transport.Also, the removal of these creatures from their native habitats can harm ecosystems.When animals that play important ecological * roles begin to disappear, other species are often destroyed, too.For all of these reasons, it's best to adopt only traditional, domesticated animals to keep as pets.
(Source: Mark Deer, "Lure of the Exotic Stirs Trouble in the Animal Kingdom," 
The New York Times, February 12, 2002, www.nytimes.com.)
_______________________________
*ecological: related to the balance of nature

• A) circular reasoning
• B) hasty generalization
• C) slippery slope
• D) unidentified experts or dated research
• E) irrelevant reason
• F) no error