The snapping turtle shown above, lives in a small farm pond where its major prey is largemouth bass. in turn, the bass primarily eat emerald minnows. this snapping turtle weighs 40 pounds. if the pond has 10 mature snapping turtles of this size, approximately how many pounds of minnows are required to support them?
a) 400
b) 4,000
c) 40,000
d) 400,000

The answer is C, 40,000.

Explanation:

You can obviously tell that 400 is too low... that's one meal for all of the turtles! They would need 40,000 minnows because it's a stable number. They can reproduce, and keep the population up. 4,000, though, is too low because they wouldn't have enough time to reproduce and continue to keep the population alive. Therefore, 40,000 should be a stable population.

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