Free SAT Practice Question

Question 1 of 1
ID: SAT-RW-CS-024
Section: SAT Reading & Writing (RW) – Craft and Structure
Topic: Cross-Text Connections
Difficulty level: Hard

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Text 1

Many songbirds migrate at night, crossing hundreds of miles and returning to the same wintering grounds year after year. The long-accepted explanation is celestial. As nestlings, the birds watch the night sky turn around the motionless point above the pole and learn where that fixed center lies; from it they read their heading. On a clear night, the argument goes, the stars themselves tell a bird which way is south.

Text 2

Ingrid Halvorsen's team raised songbirds that never once saw a natural sky, then tested them inside an enclosure screened from all outside light. The birds still faced their correct migratory direction. Only when the magnetic field around the enclosure was artificially turned did the birds swing around to match it. Halvorsen concludes that the birds' primary compass is magnetic; the stars, where they can be seen, serve to fine-tune a heading the magnetic sense has already set.

Based on the texts, how would Halvorsen (Text 2) most likely respond to the explanation offered in Text 1?

ABy offering further support for Text 1's claim that migrating songbirds steer chiefly by the stars. On this reading Halvorsen’s birds simply confirm the celestial account with a larger and more careful trial, adding weight to Text 1 rather than unsettling it.

BBy agreeing with Text 1's own position that a magnetic sense, not the night sky, is the birds' main compass.

CBy arguing that the celestial cues Text 1 treats as primary are actually secondary, since the birds hold their heading even when no sky is visible.

DBy maintaining that birds rely on the stars only during the first migration of their lives.

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