Where did the rabbits go?

Algebra Level 2

In a cage, there are eagles, rabbits and flamingos. There are 50 animals in the cage with a total of 128 legs (assume that flamingos have only one leg). But soon after putting the animals together, the zoo noticed that each eagle ate two of the rabbits each day. After 4 days, there was only one rabbit left in the cage. There are only a total of 32 legs left. How many flamingos are in the cage?


The answer is 22.

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3 solutions

The number of eagle = x, the number of rabbit = y, the number of flamingo = z.
After 4 days, the total legs are :
2x + 4 + z = 32 since there are x eagles, 1 rabbit and z flamingos.
2x + z = 28 ........ equation (1)
In first day, the total legs are :
2x + 4y + z = 128 since there are x eagles, y rabbit, and z flamingos.
2x + z = 128 - 4y ........... equation (2)
Solving both equation : 128 - 4y = 28
y = 25 \boxed{y = 25}
Remember that each day, each eagle ate 2 rabbit. So, the number of rabbit eaten after 4 days are 24.
y = 8x + 1. x = 3 \boxed{x = 3}
Using equation (1), with x=3, z = 22 \boxed{z = 22}
Thus, the number of flamingos are 22.


that is a great, complete and organized solution for the problem; better than my own! :) Great job!

Karen Gao - 7 years ago

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Thanks! I thought your solution is also good. Seems that I did the same way like yours, but I find the rabbit first, you find the eagle first :)

Suradnyana Wisnawa - 7 years ago

I found that the number of rabbits eaten each day for 4 days was useless, but the only useful part was that there was 1 rabbit left.

Asher Joy - 7 years ago
Elijah Chew
Jun 14, 2014

Over the period of 4 days, the number of legs reduced by 128 32 = 96 128-32=96

This meant that 96 / 4 = 24 96/4=24 rabbits were eaten.

Hence, 6 6 rabbits were eaten in one day and thus, there are 6 / 2 = 3 6/2=3 eagles in the cage.

As such, we can conclude that there were 3 eagles, 25 rabbits, and 22 flamingos at the start.

Karen Gao
Jun 6, 2014

Let's let the number of eagles= "a" first. Since each of the eagles ate two rabbits each day in 4 days, we know that the eagles ate 2x4xa rabbits in total. Since there are only 1 rabbit left in the cage after 4 days, the number of rabbits at first will be 2x4xa + 1. Now let's build an equation: we can find the number of rabbits eaten by subtracting the amount of legs after 4 days from the number of rabbits in the cage at first divided by 4 since the the rabbits each have 4 legs so: 128-32=(2x4xa)4 in which we get a= 3 now that we know there are 3 eagles, we know the number of rabbits by substituting 3 for "a" in 2x4xa + 1 in which we get 25 rabbits. So to find the number of flamingos, we subtract the numbers of eagles and rabbits from the 50 in which we get 22.

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