The parachutelike membranes of Africa’s scaly-tailed flying squirrels differ from those of the flying squirrels in the family Sciuridae because they are attached to a cartilage rod at the elbow instead of the wrist.
A. because they are attached to a cartilage rod at the elbow instead of
B. because of being attached to a cartilage rod at the elbow rather than at
C. in their attachment to a cartilage rod at the elbow instead of being attached at
D. in that they are attached to a cartilage rod at the elbow rather than at
E. in their being attached to a cartilage rod at the elbow instead of

This is GMATPREP question. Pls can you help me identify the right answer and also what are the errors in the wrong answer choices?

It's D.

Saurabh Malpani

Mr Chunti.why don't you clearly post the Official Answer with your questions..... whats the OA for this question ?

Hi Ron, I am not sure how to split the two questions in to two thread. Pls can you help me do that. Also following are the
OA for first one is -->"E"
OA for second one -->"D"

On the second question I am not sure how I could have narrowed down the answer to option D as it say's "in that they are attached to a cartilage rod at the elbow rather than at" why this is best and what "they" is referring to and what criteria one should use to narrow down in scenarios where there is confusion in identifying clear antecedent of a pronouns like in this question?

well, you have a point. remember that you are looking for totally unambiguous pronouns whenever possible - but, in some cases, there aren't any correct answers with totally unambiguous pronouns. this happens to be one of those cases.

the correct idiomatic expression with 'differ' is 'differ in...', so a-b are out. (if you said 'differ because', you'd have to give the reason behind the genesis of the difference, not the nature of the difference itself.) that leaves c-d-e, which all contain the supposedly ambiguous pronoun - so you're stuck with it.

:(

Hello Ron,

I do not see "differ" in choice A and B for this problem. Are you still talking about "the Parachutelike..." problem?? For the parachutelike problem,
I am down to choices B and D. I eliminated B because it had "being" which is considered wordy in GMAT. Is this correct reasoning for eliminating B???

Thanks,

it's in the non-underlined part, about 1/2 line from the beginning of the sentence. the first word of the underlined part - the split between "because" and "in..." - is attached to "differ", although there's an intervening prepositional phrase (the one beginning with 'from').

i'm a bit worried by this response, because it seems to indicate that you don't read the NON-underlined part of the sentence. if you don't, then you need to start doing so; the non-underlined part, which is unalterable, is the ultimate arbiter of the grammar in the underlined part.

I'm not sure what's wrong with answer B
here debate is between "differ in" idiom and "they" as an ambiguous pronoun

B doesn't have any ambigous pronoun. So is there anything else wrong with it? I know about "being" in B but it doesn't seem to be that big a problem, at least to me

"being" is a big problem. if you don't realize it's a big problem, you should recalibrate your idea of what's a big problem and what's not.
remember, the gmat is the only authority on these things, and the gmat really, really, really doesn't like "being" when you're discussing the identity or properties of things.

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however, there's an even bigger problem: "because" is wrong.
in formal writing, "because" signifies an actual cause-effect relationship. if the latter thing didn't actually cause the former thing, then you can't use the word "because".

examples:

my brother and i are different in that he takes life much more seriously than i do.
according to this sentence, the way in which my brother and i are different is that he's a more serious guy than i am.
no cause and effect here.

my brother and i are different because he takes life much more seriously than i do.
according to this sentence, his more serious character, and my less serious one, have caused differences in us. in other words, the pre-existing difference in our character has actually led to further differences between us.
cause and effect relationship.

in this sentence, you're clearly trying to say that the cartilage rod attachment IS the difference, not that it causes the difference. therefore, "because" is incorrect.

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