There are a total of 100 animals: cows, sheep and buffaloes. These 100 animals ate 100 bunches of grass.
Every cow ate 5 bunches, every buffalo ate 3 bunches and every sheep ate only 1/3 bunch.
How many cow, sheep and buffalo are there? You only know that there is at least one of every kind of animal.
(In reply to
Puzzle Solution by K Sengupta)
Having regard to the given conditions, this problem has three different solutions given by:
(#cows, # buffaloes, # sheep) = (4, 18, 78); (8, 11, 81) ; (12, 4, 84)
Interestingly, the number of cows in each of these solutions is a multiple of 4, the number of sheep in each of these solutions is a multiple of 3. In addition, the respective total count of buffaloes in two of these solutions are 4 and 18 (both composite numbers), while in the remaining solution the said count is 11, a prime number.
Accordingly, if we impose the restriction that the number of buffaloes must correspond to a prime number, then we have only one solution, that is:
(#cows, # buffaloes, # sheep) = (8, 11, 81)
Edited on November 6, 2007, 4:24 am
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