CAT 2022 Slot 2: Past Year Question Paper with Answer key | CAT Mock Test Series 2024 PDF Download

 Page 1


CAT 2023 Question Paper (slot 2) 
 
 
CAT 2023 VARC Section 
 
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each 
question. 
Humans today make music. Think beyond all the qualifications that might trail after this bald 
statement: that only certain humans make music, that extensive training is involved, that 
many societies distinguish musical specialists from nonmusicians, that in today’s societies 
most listen to music rather than making it, and so forth. These qualifications, whatever their 
local merit, are moot in the face of the overarching truth that making music, considered from 
a cognitive and psychological vantage, is the province of all those who perceive and 
experience what is made. We are, almost all of us, musicians — everyone who can entrain 
(not necessarily dance) to a beat, who can recognize a repeated tune (not necessarily sing it), 
who can distinguish one instrument or one singing voice from another. I will often use an 
antique word, recently revived, to name this broader musical experience. Humans are 
musicking creatures. . . . 
The set of capacities that enables musicking is a principal marker of modern humanity. There 
is nothing polemical in this assertion except a certain insistence, which will figure often in 
what follows, that musicking be included in our thinking about fundamental human 
commonalities. Capacities involved in musicking are many and take shape in complicated 
ways, arising from innate dispositions . . . Most of these capacities overlap with nonmusical 
ones, though a few may be distinct and dedicated to musical perception and production. In 
the area of overlap, linguistic capacities seem to be particularly important, and humans are 
(in principle) language-makers in addition to music-makers — speaking creatures as well as 
musicking ones. 
Humans are symbol-makers too, a feature tightly bound up with language, not so tightly with 
music. The species Cassirer dubbed Homo symbolicus cannot help but tangle musicking in 
webs of symbolic thought and expression, habitually making it a component of behavioral 
complexes that form such expression. But in fundamental features musicking is neither 
language-like nor symbol-like, and from these differences come many clues to its ancient 
emergence. 
Page 2


CAT 2023 Question Paper (slot 2) 
 
 
CAT 2023 VARC Section 
 
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each 
question. 
Humans today make music. Think beyond all the qualifications that might trail after this bald 
statement: that only certain humans make music, that extensive training is involved, that 
many societies distinguish musical specialists from nonmusicians, that in today’s societies 
most listen to music rather than making it, and so forth. These qualifications, whatever their 
local merit, are moot in the face of the overarching truth that making music, considered from 
a cognitive and psychological vantage, is the province of all those who perceive and 
experience what is made. We are, almost all of us, musicians — everyone who can entrain 
(not necessarily dance) to a beat, who can recognize a repeated tune (not necessarily sing it), 
who can distinguish one instrument or one singing voice from another. I will often use an 
antique word, recently revived, to name this broader musical experience. Humans are 
musicking creatures. . . . 
The set of capacities that enables musicking is a principal marker of modern humanity. There 
is nothing polemical in this assertion except a certain insistence, which will figure often in 
what follows, that musicking be included in our thinking about fundamental human 
commonalities. Capacities involved in musicking are many and take shape in complicated 
ways, arising from innate dispositions . . . Most of these capacities overlap with nonmusical 
ones, though a few may be distinct and dedicated to musical perception and production. In 
the area of overlap, linguistic capacities seem to be particularly important, and humans are 
(in principle) language-makers in addition to music-makers — speaking creatures as well as 
musicking ones. 
Humans are symbol-makers too, a feature tightly bound up with language, not so tightly with 
music. The species Cassirer dubbed Homo symbolicus cannot help but tangle musicking in 
webs of symbolic thought and expression, habitually making it a component of behavioral 
complexes that form such expression. But in fundamental features musicking is neither 
language-like nor symbol-like, and from these differences come many clues to its ancient 
emergence. 
CAT 2023 Question Paper (slot 2) 
 
 
If musicking is a primary, shared trait of modern humans, then to describe its emergence 
must be to detail the coalescing of that modernity. This took place, archaeologists are clear, 
over a very long durée: at least 50,000 years or so, more likely something closer to 200,000, 
depending in part on what that coalescence is taken to comprise. If we look back 20,000 
years, a small portion of this long period, we reach the lives of humans whose musical 
capacities were probably little different from our own. As we look farther back we reach 
horizons where this similarity can no longer hold — perhaps 40,000 years ago, perhaps 
70,000, perhaps 100,000. But we never cross a line before which all the cognitive capacities 
recruited in modern musicking abruptly disappear. Unless we embrace the incredible notion 
that music sprang forth in full-blown glory, its emergence will have to be tracked in gradualist 
terms across a long period. 
This is one general feature of a history of music’s emergence . . . The history was at once 
sociocultural and biological . . . The capacities recruited in musicking are many, so describing 
its emergence involves following several or many separate strands. 
Q.1) 
Which one of the following statements, if true, would weaken the author’s claim that humans 
are musicking creatures? 
[1] As musicking is neither language-like nor symbol-like, it is a much older form of 
expression. 
[2] Nonmusical capacities are of far greater consequence to human survival than the capacity 
for music. 
[3] Musical capacities are primarily socio-cultural, which explains the wide diversity of musical 
forms. 
[4] From a cognitive and psychological vantage, musicking arises from unconscious 
dispositions, not conscious ones. 
Q.2) 
Which one of the following sets of terms best serves as keywords to the passage? 
[1] Humans; Psychological vantage; Musicking; Cassirer; Emergence of music. 
[2] Musicking; Cognitive psychology; Antique; Symbol-makers; Modernity. 
[3] Humans; Capacities; Language; Symbols; Modernity. 
Page 3


CAT 2023 Question Paper (slot 2) 
 
 
CAT 2023 VARC Section 
 
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each 
question. 
Humans today make music. Think beyond all the qualifications that might trail after this bald 
statement: that only certain humans make music, that extensive training is involved, that 
many societies distinguish musical specialists from nonmusicians, that in today’s societies 
most listen to music rather than making it, and so forth. These qualifications, whatever their 
local merit, are moot in the face of the overarching truth that making music, considered from 
a cognitive and psychological vantage, is the province of all those who perceive and 
experience what is made. We are, almost all of us, musicians — everyone who can entrain 
(not necessarily dance) to a beat, who can recognize a repeated tune (not necessarily sing it), 
who can distinguish one instrument or one singing voice from another. I will often use an 
antique word, recently revived, to name this broader musical experience. Humans are 
musicking creatures. . . . 
The set of capacities that enables musicking is a principal marker of modern humanity. There 
is nothing polemical in this assertion except a certain insistence, which will figure often in 
what follows, that musicking be included in our thinking about fundamental human 
commonalities. Capacities involved in musicking are many and take shape in complicated 
ways, arising from innate dispositions . . . Most of these capacities overlap with nonmusical 
ones, though a few may be distinct and dedicated to musical perception and production. In 
the area of overlap, linguistic capacities seem to be particularly important, and humans are 
(in principle) language-makers in addition to music-makers — speaking creatures as well as 
musicking ones. 
Humans are symbol-makers too, a feature tightly bound up with language, not so tightly with 
music. The species Cassirer dubbed Homo symbolicus cannot help but tangle musicking in 
webs of symbolic thought and expression, habitually making it a component of behavioral 
complexes that form such expression. But in fundamental features musicking is neither 
language-like nor symbol-like, and from these differences come many clues to its ancient 
emergence. 
CAT 2023 Question Paper (slot 2) 
 
 
If musicking is a primary, shared trait of modern humans, then to describe its emergence 
must be to detail the coalescing of that modernity. This took place, archaeologists are clear, 
over a very long durée: at least 50,000 years or so, more likely something closer to 200,000, 
depending in part on what that coalescence is taken to comprise. If we look back 20,000 
years, a small portion of this long period, we reach the lives of humans whose musical 
capacities were probably little different from our own. As we look farther back we reach 
horizons where this similarity can no longer hold — perhaps 40,000 years ago, perhaps 
70,000, perhaps 100,000. But we never cross a line before which all the cognitive capacities 
recruited in modern musicking abruptly disappear. Unless we embrace the incredible notion 
that music sprang forth in full-blown glory, its emergence will have to be tracked in gradualist 
terms across a long period. 
This is one general feature of a history of music’s emergence . . . The history was at once 
sociocultural and biological . . . The capacities recruited in musicking are many, so describing 
its emergence involves following several or many separate strands. 
Q.1) 
Which one of the following statements, if true, would weaken the author’s claim that humans 
are musicking creatures? 
[1] As musicking is neither language-like nor symbol-like, it is a much older form of 
expression. 
[2] Nonmusical capacities are of far greater consequence to human survival than the capacity 
for music. 
[3] Musical capacities are primarily socio-cultural, which explains the wide diversity of musical 
forms. 
[4] From a cognitive and psychological vantage, musicking arises from unconscious 
dispositions, not conscious ones. 
Q.2) 
Which one of the following sets of terms best serves as keywords to the passage? 
[1] Humans; Psychological vantage; Musicking; Cassirer; Emergence of music. 
[2] Musicking; Cognitive psychology; Antique; Symbol-makers; Modernity. 
[3] Humans; Capacities; Language; Symbols; Modernity. 
CAT 2023 Question Paper (slot 2) 
 
 
[4] Humans; Musicking; Linguistic capacities; Symbol-making; Modern humanity. 
Q.3) 
Based on the passage, which one of the following statements is a valid argument about the 
emergence of music/musicking? 
[1] Although musicking is not language-like, it shares the quality of being a form of 
expression. 
[2] All musical work is located in the overlap between linguistic capacity and music 
production. 
[3] Anyone who can perceive and experience music must be considered capable of musicking. 
[4] 20,000 years ago, human musical capacities were not very different from what they are 
today. 
Q.4) 
“Think beyond all the qualifications that might trail after this bald statement . . .” In the 
context of the passage, what is the author trying to communicate in this quoted extract? 
[1] Thinking beyond qualifications allows us to give free reign to musical expressions. 
[2] A bald statement is one that is trailed by a series of qualifying clarifications and caveats. 
[3] Although there may be many caveats and other considerations, the statement is 
essentially true. 
[4] A bald statement is one that requires no qualifications to infer its meaning. 
 
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each 
question. 
[Octopuses are] misfits in their own extended families . . . They belong to the Mollusca class 
Cephalopoda. But they don’t look like their cousins at all. Other molluscs include sea snails, 
sea slugs, bivalves – most are shelled invertebrates with a dorsal foot. Cephalopods are all 
arms, and can be as tiny as 1 centimetre and as large at 30 feet. Some of them have brains 
the size of a walnut, which is large for an invertebrate. . . . 
It makes sense for these molluscs to have added protection in the form of a higher cognition; 
they don’t have a shell covering them, and pretty much everything feeds on cephalopods, 
including humans. But how did cephalopods manage to secure their own invisibility cloak? 
Page 4


CAT 2023 Question Paper (slot 2) 
 
 
CAT 2023 VARC Section 
 
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each 
question. 
Humans today make music. Think beyond all the qualifications that might trail after this bald 
statement: that only certain humans make music, that extensive training is involved, that 
many societies distinguish musical specialists from nonmusicians, that in today’s societies 
most listen to music rather than making it, and so forth. These qualifications, whatever their 
local merit, are moot in the face of the overarching truth that making music, considered from 
a cognitive and psychological vantage, is the province of all those who perceive and 
experience what is made. We are, almost all of us, musicians — everyone who can entrain 
(not necessarily dance) to a beat, who can recognize a repeated tune (not necessarily sing it), 
who can distinguish one instrument or one singing voice from another. I will often use an 
antique word, recently revived, to name this broader musical experience. Humans are 
musicking creatures. . . . 
The set of capacities that enables musicking is a principal marker of modern humanity. There 
is nothing polemical in this assertion except a certain insistence, which will figure often in 
what follows, that musicking be included in our thinking about fundamental human 
commonalities. Capacities involved in musicking are many and take shape in complicated 
ways, arising from innate dispositions . . . Most of these capacities overlap with nonmusical 
ones, though a few may be distinct and dedicated to musical perception and production. In 
the area of overlap, linguistic capacities seem to be particularly important, and humans are 
(in principle) language-makers in addition to music-makers — speaking creatures as well as 
musicking ones. 
Humans are symbol-makers too, a feature tightly bound up with language, not so tightly with 
music. The species Cassirer dubbed Homo symbolicus cannot help but tangle musicking in 
webs of symbolic thought and expression, habitually making it a component of behavioral 
complexes that form such expression. But in fundamental features musicking is neither 
language-like nor symbol-like, and from these differences come many clues to its ancient 
emergence. 
CAT 2023 Question Paper (slot 2) 
 
 
If musicking is a primary, shared trait of modern humans, then to describe its emergence 
must be to detail the coalescing of that modernity. This took place, archaeologists are clear, 
over a very long durée: at least 50,000 years or so, more likely something closer to 200,000, 
depending in part on what that coalescence is taken to comprise. If we look back 20,000 
years, a small portion of this long period, we reach the lives of humans whose musical 
capacities were probably little different from our own. As we look farther back we reach 
horizons where this similarity can no longer hold — perhaps 40,000 years ago, perhaps 
70,000, perhaps 100,000. But we never cross a line before which all the cognitive capacities 
recruited in modern musicking abruptly disappear. Unless we embrace the incredible notion 
that music sprang forth in full-blown glory, its emergence will have to be tracked in gradualist 
terms across a long period. 
This is one general feature of a history of music’s emergence . . . The history was at once 
sociocultural and biological . . . The capacities recruited in musicking are many, so describing 
its emergence involves following several or many separate strands. 
Q.1) 
Which one of the following statements, if true, would weaken the author’s claim that humans 
are musicking creatures? 
[1] As musicking is neither language-like nor symbol-like, it is a much older form of 
expression. 
[2] Nonmusical capacities are of far greater consequence to human survival than the capacity 
for music. 
[3] Musical capacities are primarily socio-cultural, which explains the wide diversity of musical 
forms. 
[4] From a cognitive and psychological vantage, musicking arises from unconscious 
dispositions, not conscious ones. 
Q.2) 
Which one of the following sets of terms best serves as keywords to the passage? 
[1] Humans; Psychological vantage; Musicking; Cassirer; Emergence of music. 
[2] Musicking; Cognitive psychology; Antique; Symbol-makers; Modernity. 
[3] Humans; Capacities; Language; Symbols; Modernity. 
CAT 2023 Question Paper (slot 2) 
 
 
[4] Humans; Musicking; Linguistic capacities; Symbol-making; Modern humanity. 
Q.3) 
Based on the passage, which one of the following statements is a valid argument about the 
emergence of music/musicking? 
[1] Although musicking is not language-like, it shares the quality of being a form of 
expression. 
[2] All musical work is located in the overlap between linguistic capacity and music 
production. 
[3] Anyone who can perceive and experience music must be considered capable of musicking. 
[4] 20,000 years ago, human musical capacities were not very different from what they are 
today. 
Q.4) 
“Think beyond all the qualifications that might trail after this bald statement . . .” In the 
context of the passage, what is the author trying to communicate in this quoted extract? 
[1] Thinking beyond qualifications allows us to give free reign to musical expressions. 
[2] A bald statement is one that is trailed by a series of qualifying clarifications and caveats. 
[3] Although there may be many caveats and other considerations, the statement is 
essentially true. 
[4] A bald statement is one that requires no qualifications to infer its meaning. 
 
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each 
question. 
[Octopuses are] misfits in their own extended families . . . They belong to the Mollusca class 
Cephalopoda. But they don’t look like their cousins at all. Other molluscs include sea snails, 
sea slugs, bivalves – most are shelled invertebrates with a dorsal foot. Cephalopods are all 
arms, and can be as tiny as 1 centimetre and as large at 30 feet. Some of them have brains 
the size of a walnut, which is large for an invertebrate. . . . 
It makes sense for these molluscs to have added protection in the form of a higher cognition; 
they don’t have a shell covering them, and pretty much everything feeds on cephalopods, 
including humans. But how did cephalopods manage to secure their own invisibility cloak? 
CAT 2023 Question Paper (slot 2) 
 
 
Cephalopods fire from multiple cylinders to achieve this in varying degrees from species to 
species. There are four main catalysts – chromatophores, iridophores, papillae and 
leucophores. . . . 
[Chromatophores] are organs on their bodies that contain pigment sacs, which have red, 
yellow and brown pigment granules. These sacs have a network of radial muscles, meaning 
muscles arranged in a circle radiating outwards. These are connected to the brain by a nerve. 
When the cephalopod wants to change colour, the brain carries an electrical impulse through 
the nerve to the muscles that expand outwards, pulling open the sacs to display the colours 
on the skin. Why these three colours? Because these are the colours the light reflects at the 
depths they live in (the rest is absorbed before it reaches those depths). . . . 
Well, what about other colours? Cue the iridophores. Think of a second level of skin that has 
thin stacks of cells. These can reflect light back at different wavelengths. . . . It’s using the 
same properties that we’ve seen in hologram stickers, or rainbows on puddles of oil. You 
move your head and you see a different colour. The sticker isn’t doing anything but reflecting 
light – it’s your movement that’s changing the appearance of the colour. This property of 
holograms, oil and other such surfaces is called “iridescence”. . . . 
Papillae are sections of the skin that can be deformed to make a texture bumpy. Even 
humans possess them (goosebumps) but cannot use them in the manner that cephalopods 
can. For instance, the use of these cells is how an octopus can wrap itself over a rock and 
appear jagged or how a squid or cuttlefish can imitate the look of a coral reef by growing 
miniature towers on its skin. It actually matches the texture of the substrate it chooses. 
Finally, the leucophores: According to a paper, published in Nature, cuttlefish and octopuses 
possess an additional type of reflector cell called a leucophore. They are cells that scatter full 
spectrum light so that they appear white in a similar way that a polar bear’s fur appears 
white. Leucophores will also reflect any filtered light shown on them . . . If the water appears 
blue at a certain depth, the octopuses and cuttlefish can appear blue; if the water appears 
green, they appear green, and so on and so forth. 
Q.5) 
All of the following are reasons for octopuses being “misfits” EXCEPT that they: 
[1] exhibit higher intelligence than other molluscs. 
Page 5


CAT 2023 Question Paper (slot 2) 
 
 
CAT 2023 VARC Section 
 
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each 
question. 
Humans today make music. Think beyond all the qualifications that might trail after this bald 
statement: that only certain humans make music, that extensive training is involved, that 
many societies distinguish musical specialists from nonmusicians, that in today’s societies 
most listen to music rather than making it, and so forth. These qualifications, whatever their 
local merit, are moot in the face of the overarching truth that making music, considered from 
a cognitive and psychological vantage, is the province of all those who perceive and 
experience what is made. We are, almost all of us, musicians — everyone who can entrain 
(not necessarily dance) to a beat, who can recognize a repeated tune (not necessarily sing it), 
who can distinguish one instrument or one singing voice from another. I will often use an 
antique word, recently revived, to name this broader musical experience. Humans are 
musicking creatures. . . . 
The set of capacities that enables musicking is a principal marker of modern humanity. There 
is nothing polemical in this assertion except a certain insistence, which will figure often in 
what follows, that musicking be included in our thinking about fundamental human 
commonalities. Capacities involved in musicking are many and take shape in complicated 
ways, arising from innate dispositions . . . Most of these capacities overlap with nonmusical 
ones, though a few may be distinct and dedicated to musical perception and production. In 
the area of overlap, linguistic capacities seem to be particularly important, and humans are 
(in principle) language-makers in addition to music-makers — speaking creatures as well as 
musicking ones. 
Humans are symbol-makers too, a feature tightly bound up with language, not so tightly with 
music. The species Cassirer dubbed Homo symbolicus cannot help but tangle musicking in 
webs of symbolic thought and expression, habitually making it a component of behavioral 
complexes that form such expression. But in fundamental features musicking is neither 
language-like nor symbol-like, and from these differences come many clues to its ancient 
emergence. 
CAT 2023 Question Paper (slot 2) 
 
 
If musicking is a primary, shared trait of modern humans, then to describe its emergence 
must be to detail the coalescing of that modernity. This took place, archaeologists are clear, 
over a very long durée: at least 50,000 years or so, more likely something closer to 200,000, 
depending in part on what that coalescence is taken to comprise. If we look back 20,000 
years, a small portion of this long period, we reach the lives of humans whose musical 
capacities were probably little different from our own. As we look farther back we reach 
horizons where this similarity can no longer hold — perhaps 40,000 years ago, perhaps 
70,000, perhaps 100,000. But we never cross a line before which all the cognitive capacities 
recruited in modern musicking abruptly disappear. Unless we embrace the incredible notion 
that music sprang forth in full-blown glory, its emergence will have to be tracked in gradualist 
terms across a long period. 
This is one general feature of a history of music’s emergence . . . The history was at once 
sociocultural and biological . . . The capacities recruited in musicking are many, so describing 
its emergence involves following several or many separate strands. 
Q.1) 
Which one of the following statements, if true, would weaken the author’s claim that humans 
are musicking creatures? 
[1] As musicking is neither language-like nor symbol-like, it is a much older form of 
expression. 
[2] Nonmusical capacities are of far greater consequence to human survival than the capacity 
for music. 
[3] Musical capacities are primarily socio-cultural, which explains the wide diversity of musical 
forms. 
[4] From a cognitive and psychological vantage, musicking arises from unconscious 
dispositions, not conscious ones. 
Q.2) 
Which one of the following sets of terms best serves as keywords to the passage? 
[1] Humans; Psychological vantage; Musicking; Cassirer; Emergence of music. 
[2] Musicking; Cognitive psychology; Antique; Symbol-makers; Modernity. 
[3] Humans; Capacities; Language; Symbols; Modernity. 
CAT 2023 Question Paper (slot 2) 
 
 
[4] Humans; Musicking; Linguistic capacities; Symbol-making; Modern humanity. 
Q.3) 
Based on the passage, which one of the following statements is a valid argument about the 
emergence of music/musicking? 
[1] Although musicking is not language-like, it shares the quality of being a form of 
expression. 
[2] All musical work is located in the overlap between linguistic capacity and music 
production. 
[3] Anyone who can perceive and experience music must be considered capable of musicking. 
[4] 20,000 years ago, human musical capacities were not very different from what they are 
today. 
Q.4) 
“Think beyond all the qualifications that might trail after this bald statement . . .” In the 
context of the passage, what is the author trying to communicate in this quoted extract? 
[1] Thinking beyond qualifications allows us to give free reign to musical expressions. 
[2] A bald statement is one that is trailed by a series of qualifying clarifications and caveats. 
[3] Although there may be many caveats and other considerations, the statement is 
essentially true. 
[4] A bald statement is one that requires no qualifications to infer its meaning. 
 
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each 
question. 
[Octopuses are] misfits in their own extended families . . . They belong to the Mollusca class 
Cephalopoda. But they don’t look like their cousins at all. Other molluscs include sea snails, 
sea slugs, bivalves – most are shelled invertebrates with a dorsal foot. Cephalopods are all 
arms, and can be as tiny as 1 centimetre and as large at 30 feet. Some of them have brains 
the size of a walnut, which is large for an invertebrate. . . . 
It makes sense for these molluscs to have added protection in the form of a higher cognition; 
they don’t have a shell covering them, and pretty much everything feeds on cephalopods, 
including humans. But how did cephalopods manage to secure their own invisibility cloak? 
CAT 2023 Question Paper (slot 2) 
 
 
Cephalopods fire from multiple cylinders to achieve this in varying degrees from species to 
species. There are four main catalysts – chromatophores, iridophores, papillae and 
leucophores. . . . 
[Chromatophores] are organs on their bodies that contain pigment sacs, which have red, 
yellow and brown pigment granules. These sacs have a network of radial muscles, meaning 
muscles arranged in a circle radiating outwards. These are connected to the brain by a nerve. 
When the cephalopod wants to change colour, the brain carries an electrical impulse through 
the nerve to the muscles that expand outwards, pulling open the sacs to display the colours 
on the skin. Why these three colours? Because these are the colours the light reflects at the 
depths they live in (the rest is absorbed before it reaches those depths). . . . 
Well, what about other colours? Cue the iridophores. Think of a second level of skin that has 
thin stacks of cells. These can reflect light back at different wavelengths. . . . It’s using the 
same properties that we’ve seen in hologram stickers, or rainbows on puddles of oil. You 
move your head and you see a different colour. The sticker isn’t doing anything but reflecting 
light – it’s your movement that’s changing the appearance of the colour. This property of 
holograms, oil and other such surfaces is called “iridescence”. . . . 
Papillae are sections of the skin that can be deformed to make a texture bumpy. Even 
humans possess them (goosebumps) but cannot use them in the manner that cephalopods 
can. For instance, the use of these cells is how an octopus can wrap itself over a rock and 
appear jagged or how a squid or cuttlefish can imitate the look of a coral reef by growing 
miniature towers on its skin. It actually matches the texture of the substrate it chooses. 
Finally, the leucophores: According to a paper, published in Nature, cuttlefish and octopuses 
possess an additional type of reflector cell called a leucophore. They are cells that scatter full 
spectrum light so that they appear white in a similar way that a polar bear’s fur appears 
white. Leucophores will also reflect any filtered light shown on them . . . If the water appears 
blue at a certain depth, the octopuses and cuttlefish can appear blue; if the water appears 
green, they appear green, and so on and so forth. 
Q.5) 
All of the following are reasons for octopuses being “misfits” EXCEPT that they: 
[1] exhibit higher intelligence than other molluscs. 
CAT 2023 Question Paper (slot 2) 
 
 
[2] do not possess an outer protective shell. 
[3] are consumed by humans and other animals. 
[4] have several arms. 
Q.6) 
Based on the passage, it can be inferred that camouflaging techniques in an octopus are most 
dissimilar to those in: 
[1] polar bears 
[2] cuttlefish 
[3] squids 
[4] sea snails 
Q.7) 
Based on the passage, we can infer that all of the following statements, if true, would weaken 
the camouflaging adeptness of Cephalopods EXCEPT: 
[1] the hydrostatic pressure at the depths at which Cephalopods reside renders radial muscle 
movements difficult. 
[2] the number of chromatophores in Cephalopods is half the number of iridophores and 
leucophores. 
[3] light reflects the colours red, green, and yellow at the depths at which Cephalopods 
reside. 
[4] the temperature of water at the depths at which Cephalopods reside renders the 
transmission of neural signals difficult. 
Q.8) 
Which one of the following statements is not true about the camouflaging ability of 
Cephalopods? 
[1] Cephalopods can change their colour. 
[2] Cephalopods can change their texture. 
[3] Cephalopods can blend into the colour of their surroundings. 
[4] Cephalopods can take on the colour of their predator. 
 
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each