Today’s SAT Question of the Day is an identifying sentence errors question with a verb error.  Let’s focus in:

Beluga whales […] are the only animals known mimicking the sounds of human speech spontaneously.

Do you hear the error in this shortened version of the sentence?Things are “known to do something” or “known for doing something”, but they’re not “known doing something”.  I am “known to tutor for the SAT” – that is to say, it is reasonably expected that you can find me tutoring on any given day.

This is also true for the whales – they are “known to mimic” the sounds of human speech.  “Known mimicking” makes no sense and is grammatically incorrect.  Error found!

Remember, as always…check those verbs.