Why Sauropods' brains were so small ?

[Widdekind]

According to Science Illustrated [Nov./Dec. 2008 AD], pg. 33:

 

Do all animals need to sleep ?

 

All [Earth] animals have periods of rest & activity during the day. These biological rhythms typically follow the day's light-dark cycle, and are controlled by an inner biological clock.

 

Arthropods, such as insects & scorpions, are the simplest animals in which some form of possible sleep has been demonstrated. They exhibit periods of reduced activity, but don't seem to show the marked sudden decrease in reactions to their surroundings that we normally associate w/ sleep. They also do not experience the deep sleep found among mammals & birds, which have highly developed nervous systems. These animals have discrete periods of sleep w/ differing types of brain activity. If they don't rest, their motor functions are diminished. The length of sleep needed varies greatly from animals to animal. Some scientists believe that diet is a factor. Herbivores, like horses, sleep as little as two hours a day, while carnivores like lions can sleep a whopping 20 hours in one stretch.

 

Scientists can't say for certain why all animals need rest. One explanation may be, that sleep reduces an animal's consumption of energy & need for food. Sleep also helps animals store impressions & experiences in memory, and has been shown to strengthen the immune system. Researchers are working to pinpoint the specific links between sleep & immunity.

 

So, sleep cycles are ubiquitous to all Earth animals. And, all smarter & more neurologically advanced species need more sleep. And, all Herbivores have evolved to sleep less, surely b/c:

• Herbivorous diets require far more time to consume
  
• Herbivores, consuming less protein, typically possess smaller brains
  

So, surely, this is why the huge dinosaurian Sauropods had such small, practically pea-sized brains — they were so big, they literally could never stop to sleep, their round-the-clock gorging requiring them to simplify their brains & neurology, as much as possible, so they could keep crashing through the forests, all night, and all day. Primitive mammals must have slept each night, deep in their dens, to the deep foot-thumps and bellows of these big beasts !

 

Possible ? Plausible ??

[Mokele]

Consider whales. Bigger than any sauropod, eating food that's considerably harder to find and of just as marginal quality, yet very smart.

 

I suspect the whole "herbivore vs carnivore" thing is a load based on the particularities of ungulate mammals and carnivorans. It certainly doesn't seem true outside of mammals (parrots are herbivores).

[Widdekind]

What about whales being marine mammals, whereas sauropods were terrestrial animals ? Would that make any difference ?

[Mokele]

Possibly, but the point is that the whole "dumb herbivore, smart predator" thing is still based on a highly limited diversity of organisms, all within mammalia, so you cannot simply assume reptilia will follow suit.

[Sisyphus]

I imagine there are a lot of other factors involved. For example, a lion is an apex predator. It only really has to be alert when it itself is hunting, and has little to fear from a 20 hour nap. By contrast, animals with natural predators have to be alert pretty much all the time (or at least very good at hiding when they're not), because avoiding being eaten is a 24 hour a day job. Whales and dolphins also need to be at least partially alert all the time, for that reason and another: they have to be conscious to breathe. So they do sleep, but only with one half of their brains at a time.

[Tau Meson]

So, sleep cycles are ubiquitous to all Earth animals. And, all smarter & more neurologically advanced species need more sleep. And, all Herbivores have evolved to sleep less, surely b/c:

• Herbivorous diets require far more time to consume
  
• Herbivores, consuming less protein, typically possess smaller brains
  

So, surely, this is why the huge dinosaurian Sauropods had such small, practically pea-sized brains — they were so big, they literally could never stop to sleep, their round-the-clock gorging requiring them to simplify their brains & neurology, as much as possible, so they could keep crashing through the forests, all night, and all day. Primitive mammals must have slept each night, deep in their dens, to the deep foot-thumps and bellows of these big beasts !

 

Possible ? Plausible ??

 

I don't see how that follows. Human beings require way less sleep and have had a largely vegetarian diet for most of their existence (prior to the 20th century, that is), and we evolved to be the smartest animals on Earth. Elephants and whales are very smart too and they are herbivores.

 

EDIT: Just looked up the diets of whales, and not all of them are herbivores. Sorry.

 

Also, what matters more is the ratio of brain size to the rest of the body when determining intelligence, not so much the size of the brain itself.

 

 

If anything, greater intelligence is inversely correlated with sleep. Some of the greatest geniuses of all time usually went by on very little sleep, like Nikola Tesla for example (he averaged about 4 hours a night).

Edited February 16, 2010 by Tau Meson
Not all whales are herbivores.

[Moontanman]

I don't see how that follows. Human beings require way less sleep and have had a largely vegetarian diet for most of their existence (prior to the 20th century, that is), and we evolved to be the smartest animals on Earth. Elephants and whales are very smart too and they are all herbivores.

 

 

Humans did not follow a largely vegetarian diet, humans have been predators, eating meat is how we grew large brains. Whales are not herbivores by any definition.

 

If anything, greater intelligence is inversely correlated with sleep. Some of the greatest geniuses of all time usually went by on very little sleep, like Nikola Tesla for example (he averaged about 4 hours a night).

 

 

I sleep even less, does that mean I am intelligent, i don't see the correlation here.

[Tau Meson]

 

 

Humans did not follow a largely vegetarian diet, humans have been predators, eating meat is how we grew large brains. Whales are not herbivores by any definition.

 

 

Are you sure? We are predators only in the sense that we hunted, but most hunter-gatherer societies got most of their food from the gathering part. Hunting was often unsuccessful, dangerous, and very time consuming in general (of course, when they did get something, it was very useful, but not so much for nutritional purposes). And in "civilized" times, only the elite were able to eat a significant amount of meat. The availability of meat to the general populace is a very recent phenomenon, made possible only by industrial agriculture.

 

And if eating meat did contribute to our large brains, then why didn't the rest of the predators out there become at least as smart as we did? Take a look at the diet of our nearest biological species, the primates: http://web.cast.uark.edu/local/icaes/conferences/wburg/posters/nconklin/conklin.html

 

As you can see, they eat very little to meat whatsoever.

 

 

 

I sleep even less, does that mean I am intelligent, i don't see the correlation here.

 

How much do you sleep on average? Note that I'm not trying to imply a causation, but that intelligence seems to be greater for beings with less sleep in general.

Edited February 16, 2010 by Tau Meson

[Moontanman]

 

Are you sure? We are predators only in the sense that we hunted, but most hunter-gatherer societies got most of their food from the gathering part. Hunting was often unsuccessful, dangerous, and very time consuming in general (of course, when they did get something, it was very useful). And in "civilized" times, only the elite were able to eat a significant amount of meat. The availability of meat to the general populace is a very recent phenomenon, made possible only by industrial agriculture.

 

I am quite sure, the eating of meat fueled our large brians

 

http://www.paulcooijmans.com/evolution/eating_meat.html

 

http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/99legacy/6-14-1999a.html

 

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2008/04/eating-meat-led-to-smaller-stomachs-bigger-brains/

 

And if eating meat did contribute to our large brains, then why aren't the rest of the predators out there become as smart as we did?

 

They don't have hands or use tools, their predatory nature has little to do with intelligence and everything to do with having big teeth and claws.

 

 

How much do you sleep on average?

 

If I'm lucky with sleeping pills 2 hours a night.

---

Merged post follows:

Consecutive posts merged

[quote name=Tau Meson;544442Take a look at the diet of our nearest biological species' date=' the primates: http://web.cast.uark.edu/local/icaes/conferences/wburg/posters/nconklin/conklin.html

 

As you can see, they eat very little to meat whatsoever. [/quote]

 

 

Chimps kill and eat monkeys, but they do not have big brians like ours, I think the links i provided tell the tale.

[Tau Meson]

I am quite sure, the eating of meat fueled our large brians

 

http://www.paulcooijmans.com/evolution/eating_meat.html

 

http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/99legacy/6-14-1999a.html

 

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2008/04/eating-meat-led-to-smaller-stomachs-bigger-brains/

 

 

And I am very skeptical about that, since the main power source for our brains is glucose, and it's primary composition are water and lipids. So are other scientists:

 

http://news.bio-medicine.org/biology-news-3/Early-humans-on-the-menu-8054-3/

 

http://www.ivu.org/history/early/archaeology.html

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6983330.stm

 

 

 

They don't have hands or use tools, their predatory nature has little to do with intelligence and everything to do with having big teeth and claws.

 

Ok, but that doesn't really answer my question. Why aren't they at least as intelligent as we are?

 

 

 

If I'm lucky with sleeping pills 2 hours a night.

 

I'm sorry to hear about that. I hope you get well soon.

 

 

Chimps kill and eat monkeys

 

Source? It's a moot point anyway, since monkeys aren't in their principle diet. I don't think it can be considered a major contributor to their intelligence, certainly not on an evolutionary time scale.

Edited February 16, 2010 by Tau Meson

[Mr Skeptic]

Primates value meat highly, though they get rather little of it. (They prefer their meat cooked, by the way). While the brain runs on glucose, like everything else, protein is needed to build our brain and other organs.

 

Intelligent people tend to need more sleep than average, and individual's sleep requirements can vary drastically. "Geniuses" are the absurdly motivated people who usually are also intelligent. What they accomplish is by far not a product of intelligence alone, but of continuously working on a problem until it is solved. Little sleep is easily a part of that, although less sleep is required if you do naps instead of a single long sleep. I don't think you will find many lazy geniuses.

[Moontanman]

And I am very skeptical about that, since the main power source for our brains is glucose, and it's primary composition are water and lipids. So are other scientists:

 

http://news.bio-medicine.org/biology-news-3/Early-humans-on-the-menu-8054-3/

 

Being prey doesn't mean you cannot be a predator, and scavenging had a lot to do with it too.

 

http://www.ivu.org/history/early/archaeology.html

 

A link from a vegan site promoting vegan-ism? You really want to use that to show early humans were vegetarians, to these people their dogs are vegetarians.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6983330.stm

 

He said it was impossible to conclude that the introduction of starchy foods into the diet lay behind the emergence of larger brains in humans.

 

 

Not a bad link as I have shown in the quotes not exactly the final word is it?

 

 

Read my links again, pay attention to what they say, meat is a better food than plants, it's more concentrated, it allows for smaller digestive systems and eating less food so all your time isn't spent eating. Lots of other benefits as well. Really read the links, don't just graze over them.

 

 

Ok, but that doesn't really answer my question. Why aren't they at least as intelligent as we are?

 

Because they don't have to be, they use the benefits of eating meat to do other things. We use our brains to make tools and weapons, other carnivores already have weapons built in they do not need them.

 

 

 

I'm sorry to hear about that. I hope you get well soon.

 

No need, I've been that way my whole life.

 

 

Source? It's a moot point anyway, since monkeys aren't in their principle diet. I don't think it can be considered a major contributor to their intelligence, certainly not on an evolutionary time scale.

 

No it is not a primary but it is and was for humans, chimps do not have the brains of humans, they do not need the same food value from their foods as we did and do. But saying chimps are vegetarians is simply not true. Chimps will eat meat at any opportunity but we cook it, we get much more out of meat than chimps do.

Edited February 16, 2010 by Moontanman

[Tau Meson]

 

 

 

Being prey doesn't mean you cannot be a predator, and scavenging had a lot to do with it too.

 

 

Well? Which aspect do you think probably contributed a lot more to our intelligence? I seriously doubt scavenging played an important part in our diet very early on since they were in constant competition from true predators, and when we did hunt most of our food came overwhelmingly from the gathering part (like seeds, fruit, nuts, etc.). If anything, eating meat contributed more to our ability to adapt to different environments rather than brain growth and intelligence.

 

 

A link from a vegan site promoting vegan-ism? You really want to use that to show early humans were vegetarians, to these people their dogs are vegetarians.

 

Why don't you attack the science rather than the source. No offense, but this objection sounds just like the sort of thing you would hear from a global warming denier complaining that the global warming data comes from the UN, or a creationist complaining that the information for evolution came from talkorigins.org or richarddawkins.net.

 

Besides which, there is nothing wrong with feeding your dog a vegetarian diet. Dogs are true omnivores, after all. Personally, the only pets to which I feed meat to are my cats, since they are carnivores and can survive only from a meat-based diet. And real meat at that, from an organic farm, none of the BS that comes from the regular supermarket or from the pet-store.

 

Not a bad link as I have shown in the quotes not exactly the final word is it?

 

 

Read my links again, pay attention to what they say, meat is a better food than plants, it's more concentrated, it allows for smaller digestive systems and eating less food so all your time isn't spent eating. Lots of other benefits as well. Really read the links, don't just graze over them.

 

I did, and some of your links clearly admits that this conclusion is very shaky at best.

 

Our human ancestors were not wholly carnivores — “that would be silly' date='” said Aiello, [b']who does not argue that meat-eating caused bigger brains[/b] — just that it made bigger brains possible.

 

Note that the article itself does not really delve into great detail as to what kind of nutrients the meats that they ate had, nor which ones would have been important. Or how it made bigger brains possible.

 

 

Another one of your article flat out admitted that the calories that the brain actually needs for development are starches!

 

The brain is a relentless consumer of calories' date=' said Milton. It needs glucose 24 hours a day. Animal protein probably did not provide many of those calories, [b']which were more likely to come from carbohydrates[/b], she said.

 

So, where do most of these carbs come from?

 

Also note that when this article talks about malnutrition, it is talking about the modern diet, which is horribly nutrient deficient. Today's diet is based on primarily 3 or 4 sources of food, such as corn, potatoes, wheat, and rice. It is therefore biased to begin with; in order to reliably asses how we evolved with respect to diet it is far more useful to look at the diets of hunter-gatherers, since their diet is much more varied.

 

 

As for the time spent eating, I'm pretty certain that has much more to do with how massive an animal is (or the speed of metabolism), not so much where the calories come from. The whales that eat meat also have to spend a huge amount of time consuming calories too, since they have to support all of that huge body mass.

 

Think about it this way, if meat was really all that great, then all of those carnivores wouldn't need to sleep so much, now would they? If they are not too active, they probably don't have that much energy to begin with.

 

 

Because they don't have to be, they use the benefits of eating meat to do other things. We use our brains to make tools and weapons, other carnivores already have weapons built in they do not need them.

 

That doesn't really make any sense though. The whole argument was that eating meat contributed to brain size, and yet the only animals, at least as far as land based animals are concerned, with the bigger brain to body ratios are either herbivores or omnivores. It makes since that if meat contributed to brain size, then carnivores should be getting bigger and bigger brains as time goes on... (The only exceptions are some whales and dolphins, but look at the nutrient content of their food).

 

 

 

No it is not a primary but it is and was for humans, chimps do not have the brains of humans, they do not need the same food value from their foods as we did and do.

 

I don't know of any hunter-gatherer tribes that based their diet on monkeys. And if our modern diet is the supposedly the ideal one, then why is it killing us?

 

But saying chimps are vegetarians is simply not true. Chimps will eat meat at any opportunity but we cook it, we get much more out of meat than chimps do.

 

This is an evasion. I just provided a link that showed the diet of wild chimps, and with the exception of insects (which doesn't really qualify as meat, and is only a very small percentage of their total diet), they eat vegetables and fruit pretty exclusively.

 

How much do we really get from meat? As far as I'm aware, most of the concentrated calories that you like to cite are from saturated fat, not the more essential nutrients like carbs or lipids.

---

Merged post follows:

Consecutive posts merged

Primates value meat highly, though they get rather little of it. (They prefer their meat cooked, by the way). While the brain runs on glucose, like everything else, protein is needed to build our brain and other organs.

 

That's true, but I have to ask, where does an elephant (or cows, pigs, chimps, any other large-brained herbivore/omnivore) get it's protein? Also, here is data for the composition of the human brain:

 

http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/facts.html

 

Water and lipids make up the significant majority of the human brain. Sure, protein is third on the list, but not quite as important as far as mass goes.

 

If anything, having lots of protein can be quite dangerous. And not all proteins are good, look up prions for example.

 

Intelligent people tend to need more sleep than average, and individual's sleep requirements can vary drastically.

 

I guess. I will openly admit that my previous statement about greater intelligence=less sleep is based entirely on anecdotal observation rather than hard data, as I am basing it only on my observations of my college peers. And I can tell you that despite sleep deprivation, most college graduates and undergrads can function quite fine.

 

Although, less sleep is probably more correlated to a decline in mental health than to intelligence.

[Mr Skeptic]

That's true, but I have to ask, where does an elephant (or cows, pigs, chimps, any other large-brained herbivore/omnivore) get it's protein?

 

From eating plants for most of the entire day?

[Tau Meson]

From eating plants for most of the entire day?

 

That may be true for Elephants, but then they are enormous. Chimps don't eat plants all the time though. And neither do pigs, or horses, or this guy.

 

For example, typical fruit already has a higher protein content than most meats, with the exception of fish. Soybeans are much higher in protein content, and so are roots.

[Mr Skeptic]

That may be true for Elephants, but then they are enormous. Chimps don't eat plants all the time though. And neither do pigs, or horses, or this guy.

 

Chimps, pigs, and humans are omnivores. As for horses,

 

http://pods.dasnr.okstate.edu/docushare/dsweb/Get/Document-2084/ANSI-3981web.pdf

Access to pastures can be implemented around other farm routines such as morning and evening feedings. In that plan, horses could graze for 8 to 10 hours between feedings.

 

they spend plenty of time eating. This can be reduced by artificial diets of course.

 

For example, typical fruit already has a higher protein content than most meats, with the exception of fish. Soybeans are much higher in protein content, and so are roots.

 

Hm...

[Moontanman]

That may be true for Elephants, but then they are enormous. Chimps don't eat plants all the time though. And neither do pigs, or horses, or this guy.

 

For example, typical fruit already has a higher protein content than most meats, with the exception of fish. Soybeans are much higher in protein content, and so are roots.

 

You have an agenda that has nothing to do with sauropod brains, why don't you stop being so disingenuous and start a thread on being a vegan and stop trying to mislead every one into thinking you are trying to argue why sauropods had small brains? BTW, there is more to it than just small orange sized brains.

 

http://www.examiner.com/x-10722-Austin-Science-Policy-Examiner~y2009m11d14-Say-hello-to-a-titanic-ancestor

 

There is some evidence that evolution had begun equipping sauropods with an innovative solution. For one, their brains were teeny-tiny compared to other dinos and contemporary reptilian peers. A 25 ton sauropod had a brain the size of an orange giving it one of the smallest brain to body mass ratios of any dinosaur known. Smaller brain, less blood needed. And among some dinos, lumps of nerve tissue called spinal ganglia may have grown considerably. Paleontologists have speculated that it's almost as if they had a sort of second brain developing in their pelvic girdle near the base of their long tails. If something like that applies to sauropod giants, and had that evolutionary process not been rudely interrupted by a wandering space rock, it's possible that sauropods would have transferred most of their brain function from their petite skull to their comfortably rotund waist.

[GenesForLife]

May have something to do with genes that regulated skull size during development, an interesting case detailing the involvement of such a gene in humans is the evolution of the ASPM2 gene, knockout of which causes microcephaly (small head leading to a smaller brain)