Question

A pet shop manager wants the same number of birds in each cage he wants to use as few cages as possible but he can only have one of each bird in each cage if he has 42 parakeets in 18 canaries how many birds will he put in each cage.

Answer 1

Since there are more parakeets than canaries, it is not possible to have only 1 of each bird in each cage and have the same number of birds in each cage.

He could use 42 cages, putting a canary in with the parakeet in 18 of them. Then he would have 18 cages with 2 birds each, and 24 cages with 1 bird each.

The only way to have the same number of birds (1) in all cages is to have 60 cages, 42 of which have 1 parakeet, and 18 of which have 1 canary.

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If more than 1 of each kind of bird can be put in the cage, the collection of birds could be put into 6 cages, each of which would be home to 7 parakeets and 3 canaries.