Final answer:
To determine how many birds the pet shop manager should put in each cage, we find the greatest common divisor of 42 and 18, which is 6. Therefore, the pet shop manager should put 6 birds in each cage for uniformity and minimizing the number of cages.
Step-by-step explanation:
The question concerns finding the highest number that can evenly divide into both 42 parakeets and 18 canaries so that each cage contains the same number of birds and the least number of cages is used. This involves finding the greatest common divisor (GCD) of the two numbers.
To find the GCD, we list the factors of each number:
Factors of 42: 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 14, 21, 42
Factors of 18: 1, 2, 3, 6, 9, 18
The common factors are 1, 2, 3, and 6, so the GCD of 42 and 18 is 6.
Therefore, the pet shop manager should put 6 birds in each cage to have the same number of birds per cage while using the fewest cages possible.