Game wardens use experiments to help determine the number of raccoons in a forest. Suppose 60 raccoons are caught, tagged, and released back into the forest. Two weeks later 40 raccoons are caught, of which 4 are found to have tags. Estimate the number of raccoons in the forest.

Question

Game wardens use experiments to help determine the number of raccoons in a forest. Suppose 60 raccoons are caught, tagged, and released back into the forest. Two weeks later 40 raccoons are caught, of which 4 are found to have tags. Estimate the number of raccoons in the forest.

Answer 1

Let's call the total number of raccoons in the forest "N". We know that 60 raccoons were tagged and released, so we can set up a proportion:

60/N = 4/40

We can simplify this by cross-multiplying:

4N = 60 x 40

4N = 2400

Now we can solve for N:

N = 2400/4

N = 600

So we estimate that there are 600 raccoons in the forest.