Elephants in a zoo require approximately 150 pounds of food per day. Elephants in the wild require approximately 315 pounds of food per day.


Elephants in a zoo vs Elephants in the wild

Here in my opinion you supposed an assumption singular vs plural that is misleading.

Elephants is intended as a collective noun. The elephants (total) in a zoo, on average the eat 150 pounds

Elephants into the wild (collectively) eat 315


Even though for animals should be grammatically correct the words: a memory of elephants to pinpoint a group. And even in this case we assume as the memory of elephants, ALL the elephants. They could be all the elephants , in an absolute sense OR all the elephants in Namibia rather than in South Africa

Here when I read elephants I do not have any reasoning doubt that we are talking about the ENTIRE group in a zoon and the group in the entire Africa Continent + India+ Thailand+ other countries where we can find these beautiful mammals.

regards

OE

This is exactly why the whole question is misleading. You are using a collective noun but it is not clear whether you are applying the statistic to each elephant individually or as a whole group.

As an example, if I said, "Customers in a restaurant require approximately 150 pounds of food per day", it would not be clear to me if each customer ate 150 pounds of food per day (which sounds insane) OR a collective group of customers in the restaurant ate 150 pounds of food per day (which sounds much more believable). If you compare the question and my example, the application of the statistic is inconsistent. From your reply, you would have said the statistic applies individually, whereas my example would have applied as a group.


You may have intended a collective noun, but that is not the issue. The main issue is that we don't know how you are applying the "pounds of food per day" statistic and it is ambiguous whether the lbs of food per day applies individually or collectively. You must convey that each elephant is receiving 150 lbs. of food per day, and the stimulus does not do that.

The answer is D, you're wrong.