▶ Your Answer :
In the reading passage, there is ample support for the author's
claim that prairie dogs should be exterminated because they are harmful in
several ways. However, the professor in the lecture gives several reasons as a
rebuttal to the author's point.
First, the professor contends that burrows which prairie dogs dig and
live do not harm for land. The burrows can prevent erosion rather than make
erosion, since prairie dogs dig soil and the soil can be looser and penetration
occurs more easily. This casts doubt on the reading passage's assertion that
burrows of prairie dogs damage the land because it triggers soil erosion. And
this soil erosion can make difficulty for plants to grow.
Next, the professor insists that it is very unlikely that prairie dogs
infect people with a fatal disease. People rather cannot protect disease from
rats without prairie dogs. Also, that dogs do not make physical contact with
people. This counters the reading passage's claim that the prairie dogs are
able to create a fatal disease because they have low resistance to bubonic
plague. Therefore, when that dogs bite people, people will be die if they are
not treated aptly within 24 hours.
Finally, the professor argues that prairie dogs may not effect the food
supply for live stock. They rather make increase nutritional value of plants.
Some studies showed that the land which prairie dogs live has higher
nutritional contents. This refutes the reading passage's suggestion that
prairie dogs have a negative effect on the food supply for livestock. This is
because that dogs usually consume up to 90 percent of the vegetation in some
places, so ranchers should buy food to feed their livestock. |