Q24: According to recent studies comparing the nutritional value of meat from wild animals
and meat from domesticated animals, wild animals have less total fat than do livestock
fed on grain and more of a kind of fat they think is good for cardiac health.

A. wild animals have less total fat than do livestock fed on grain and more of a kind
of fat they think is
B. wild animals have less total fat than livestock fed on grain and more of a kind of
fat thought to be
C. wild animals have less total fat than that of livestock fed on grain and have more
fat of a kind thought to be
D. total fat of wild animals is less than livestock fed on grain and they have more fat
of a kind thought to be
E. total fat is less in wild animals than that of livestock fed on grain and more of
their fat is of a kind they think is

Between B and C, what is your pick ?
Is the comparison in C correct ?
Thanks.

B. It correctly compares wild animals to livestock fed on grain and constructs the "less X and more Y" idiom correctly.

C compares wild animals to "that of" livestock... what is "that of" referring to? It also says "have less X and have more Y" - we don't need the second have. The first have can apply to both parts of the idiom.

Yes B is correct.
I over analyzed and marked C.
Thanks

Hi

Would like to clarify Q24:
According to recent studies comparing the nutritional value of meat from wild animals and meat from domesticated animals, wild animals have less total fat than do livestock fed on grain and more of a kind of fat they think is good for cardiac health.

B. wild animals have less total fat than livestock fed on grain and more of a kind of fat thought to be
C. wild animals have less total fat than that of livestock fed on grain and have more fat of a kind thought to be

Stacey mentioned Option C is incorrect because:
"C compares wild animals to "that of" livestock... what is "that of" referring to? It also says "have less X and have more Y" - we don't need the second have. The first have can apply to both parts of the idiom."

--> My understanding is that when we compare items, we should say "Protein in rice is of higher quality than that in wheat". Thus would like to check why is "that of" in option C wrong?

Thank you for your help.
KH

when you see a comparison, you need to boil the comparison down to the SINGLE NOUNS/PRONOUNS that are compared. this means, inter alia, that you have to dispense with modifiers, prepositional phrases, and the like - the same irrelevant constructions that go out the window when you consider other types of agreement (like subject-verb agreement).

in the example you've cited, the comparison is between PROTEIN ('in rice' is a modifying prepositional phrase, so it gets chucked) and THAT (which of course refers to protein), and is therefore proper.

in q24 choice c, the comparison is between ANIMALS and THAT (which in this case stands for FAT). you can't consider livestock to be the second half of the comparison, because it's part of a prepositional phrase (which is a modifier and therefore can't be part of the comparison).

B. wild animals have less total fat than livestock fed on grain and more of a kind of
fat thought to be

Isn't B incorretly saying
wild animals have less fat than wild animals have livestock
I thought for proper comaprision we need verb in the second part of comparision something like - wild animals have less total fat than do livestock.

you've learned a lesson here: the gmat's preference for that 'do' is not absolute.

from a 100% strict semantic viewpoint, i agree with you here: there's technically an ambiguity. however, we now have evidence, in the form of this problem, that the gmat doesn't consider ALL of these 'ambiguities' as truly ambiguous. rather, provided that the 'second meaning' is sufficiently absurd AND nonparallel (note the obvious logical nonparallelism of compairing total fat to livestock), it's ok to eliminate the 'do'.

sigh.

remember, we don't make the rules; they do. but with each problem like this one that you study, you'll have a better idea of exactly what their rules are.