17 minus 9 is 8. The farmer has 8 sheep left because 9 of them died. Sheep will often fall victim to poisons, infectious diseases, and physical injuries. Sheep are mostly prey, and they are aware of this. A sheep’s system is conditioned to hide noticeable signs of sickness to protect themselves from being targeted by predators.
A couple of the symptoms of poor health include loss of appetite and being lethargic. Throughout history, much of the money and labor of sheep has been focused on preventing sheep illnesses. Shepherds will often create treatments for the sheep through experimentation on the farm. There are a plethora of bacterial and viral diseases that affect sheep.
Diseases of the foot, such as foot rot and foot scald, may ensue. Ovine John’s condition is a wasting disease that affects young sheep. Bluetongue disease is an insect-borne sickness that causes fever and inflammation in the mucous membranes. Ovine rinderpest is a highly communicable and often fatal viral disease affecting sheep and goats.
If you would check out the statement, it says that “all but 9 died.” This means that out of all the sheep that are available, only 9 survived. To get the number of the sheep that have died, you need to subtract 17 with 9. The answer to this will be 8.
According to the statement, it seems that 9 of them seem to be asleep which is why they have not died yet but the rest of the sheep have already perished. This is one question that is normally used for IQ tests. The higher your IQ, the easier it will be for you to figure out what you are supposed to do.
Charlie Rogers, Manager, Bachelor of Management Studies (BMS), Lexington, Kentucky
Answered Sep 21, 2020
The answer has to be 17
• First of all, if 9 of the 17 dies, which it does not specify, he would still have 17
• If the sheep are dead or alive, he still has possession of the sheep
• The 17 could be the remainder of living sheep if they are not included in the death toll
• If, in fact, he began with 17 sheep and nine dies, then there would be 8
• I stick with the fact of the total of 17
The wording of the question is wrong in this case. If you read the actual question, it would say that “all but 8 died.” This means that there are only 8 sheep that are left because 9 of the sheep have already died. It will always be hard for farmers to keep their animals healthy, especially when there are so many types of sicknesses that may befall animals.
In this statement, there is something wrong with some of the sheep, and that is the reason why they died. If you would check the question carefully, it has asked how many are left alive. If you would need to have a mathematical equation for this, it will be 17−9 = 8.
The farmer has eight sheep left; this question is a question that requires logical thinking. This is made in order to test your think ability.
The question says how many sheep of a farmer with 17 of them have that means the farmer has 17 sheep if all but 8 of them die; this means that all of the 17 died, but eight is left, which means 9 died, leaving 8 behind. So, the farmer has just 8 sheep left.
However, some people can rush into the question and just say all the sheep died, so the farmer has no sheep that can be addressed as a rash thinking because the person did not analyze the question before answering, which will definitely yield a wrong answer.
The question shows that the farmer has 17 sheep and all but 8 of them died. This sentence implies that all the sheep the farmer has died due to some reasons unknown except 8. That is, 9 sheep out of 17 died.
The mathematical representation of this is:
17-8=9
That is, the total number of sheep minus the sheep that are alive will give the number of sheep that died.
This farmer now has 8 sheep if all of the original 17 die except for 8. This is an example of a simple test of a) arithmetic b) attention to written instructions and c) deconstructing and understanding a sentence when it is barely grammatical and deliberately worded to confuse. It is a 'trick' question to see if the respondent will simply subtract 8 from 17 instead of fully reading the sentence (which is very badly constructed)
It should be 8 because of the wording. If it said "All but 8 lived" then it would be 9. With "All (17) but 8 died," it means that all 17 sheep besides 8 had died.