Raise vs Rear

Hi,

This is from a selective cloze exercise, which aims to test semantic precision:

"I was _________ in a village and even though I've now worked in the city for many years ... "

I can choose among four possible answers:
A) reared
B) raised
C) nurtured
D) bred.

I thought both A and B could be correct, which is against the rule of the "game", because only one answer is supposed to be fine.* [:^)]

The only explanation I was able to find here in the forums is this one:

I was taught (egads, 40 years ago) that "you raise animals, you rear children", by a very precise English teacher. However, I have been trying to locate current practice on the use of rear/raise, and it appears that rear has become almost obsolete.

These definitions are from http://dictionary.cambridge.org/:
raise: to take care of a person, or an animal or plant, until they are completely grown
rear: to care for young animals or children until they are able to care for themselves
and these one from http://www.oup.com/elt/catalogue/teachersites/oald7/?oup_jspFileName=teacherSite.jsp&cc=gb:
raise: (especially NAmE) to care for a child or young animal until it is able to take care of itself:
rear: [often passive] to care for young children or animals until they are fully grown

To sum things up, according to Cambridge dic. there would be no difference between "rear" and "raise" (within this context), while Oxford dic. suggests two reasons for choosing one over the other: active/passive form and BrE/AmE. None of them mentions that one should be used for animals and the other for children.

Sorry for the long introduction ... now I'll ask my question.
Do you native speakers feel there's any difference between rear and raise? I'm interested in all of the three explanations above given (active/passive, British/American, children/animals).

Thank you!


____

*Just for the records, although I don't have the keys yet, I think they expect me to choose "A" ("reared"). However, I'm not merely interested in passing tests; I'd rather know how native speakers use these two words ... If I were to say or write that sentence, I think I'd use "raised" because it seems more natural to me ... but maybe my non-native ear is just failing me!