Biologists studying wild monkeys sometimes need the genetic material DNA from a particular monkey to determine the animal’s parentage. Until recently, DNA could be extracted only from blood. Collecting a blood sample required tranquilizing the donor animal. Now DNA can be extracted from hair. Monkeys shed large quantities of hair in places where they sleep.
Therefore, researchers will now be able to determine the parentage of individual monkeys from DNA without tranquilizing the monkeys.
1. Which of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?
A. The places in which monkeys sleep are easily accessible to researchers.
B. Information about a particular monkey’s parentage is the only kind of information that can be determined from DNA that has been extracted from that monkey’s hair.
C. For at least some samples of hair collected from monkey habitat it will be possible to associate hairs with the individual monkeys from which they came.
D. Examining DNA is the only way to determine the parentage of wild monkeys.
E. It will be necessary to obtain any hair samples used in determining a monkey’s parentage from a place where the monkey has slept.