Were Long Necks Also Tall Necks?
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- Опубликовано: 23 июл 2023
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Long-necked sauropod dinosaurs are some of the most striking animals that ever lived. But we don't know what they used their long necks for, and whether they held them high in the air or parallel to the ground. Here's what we do know.
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Sources:
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www.nature.com/articles/s4159...
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
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WOW intereztyingfj BRU so greatly huge LY fascinatingySHYNZ fr manzys crewhead😊YALL ZEES bru thanks ssys❤
"But I don't do that. Because I don't want to." LOL! My sentiments exactly!!
Now I'm imagining a huge sauropod saying it, just like that.
With a wiggly snake neck
Lmfao!
Running is terrible
@@thepeff it’s actually incredibly healthy for your body (if done safely and within your physical limits). It just takes an awful lot of motivation and energy to get up and do it early in the morning 😅
It just struck me that sauropods were around for longer than they've been gone
It's crazy.
It's peak design.
@@elmohead nah peak design is sharks
@@M_Alexander *cough horseshoe crab
@@M_Alexander crabs
Everybody is absolutely wrong!
Their long necks were to support all the gold chains they sold as they were very lucrative jewelry merchants.
I'm going to type that into ai art (sauropods wearing gold chains) I must see this thank you.
Sounds like a Resident Evil character
😂😂😂😂😂
@@spencerthompson1049 tried it on Bing. The Dino's look slick.
They also had incredibly tiny mouths for feeding such huge bodies. Whether they were eating high or low, the long reach of their necks allowed them to economize the energy used for moving those immense bodies through the fields or forests where they ate.
Depends on the species again though. There are so really weird mouth anatomies in the group too.
Yeah, honestly they almost had to be gut-fermentation dependant. When I had chickens, I started bucket fermenting their feed, because the bacteria and yeasts that are produced in the fermentation process are ludicrously more nutritious than the plant matter that grows them, while they also unlock the difficult to access nutrients in the plants themselves. The sheer size their gut or multiple chambers of gut would likely have been an industrial-scale highly efficient food processor. Also fun extrapolation from this hypothesis... sauropods farted and burped a ridiculous amount almost continually. XD
@@danielled8665 Just enormous cows 😂
We may not know if Long Necks were Tall Necks, but we do know, according to the historical documents, that Long Necks and Three Horns did not play together.
XD I love the land before time!
I'm going with the "using them to fight like giraffes" theory. Giraffes also have a HUGE range of motion they can move and position their necks into for winding back before a strike, and they have to have incredible muscular structure to make that possible. We have always wondered why sorapods' heads and mouths evolved to be so small, and that would make sense if they used them to whop each other in a fight.
They were also so huge they weren't required to do really complex thinking after reaching maturity and size. And brain is very energy intense to maintain.
With an enormous body and gut like that it would be impossible to do so.
I definitely hear you on that 10 mile run skeleton. My skeleton lied about its running habits too.
wait? lied? as in, past tense?
@@thedarkdragon1437 I dropped a shelf on my foot 2 years ago and haven't been able to walk right since. And the conditions were visible on x-ray, so my skeleton has been forced to be honest.
My skeleton would have you believe it is fully possible for me to bend and touch my toes, or do the cheerleader thing of lifting my foot up behind my back and grabbing it over my head with my hands.
I cannot do this. XD
My sister can though, so I guess that's something? I have short hamstrings... 😔
I always assumed they had long necks to reach higher leaves, I didn't even know their real purpose is somewhat unknown
some obviously did, different species would have had different neck postures
They probably ate grass
@@alexgiron9524 Grass wasn't invented yet
@daniadler4017 oh sorry, I meant Bilbo baggins' roof lawn.
I think the problem was that we have just presumed that from the moment that we got the dinosaur bones.
I’m very curious about the evolution of grasses. I can’t imagine it’s super heavily studied but I’d love to know about the origin of grasses and what unique traits makes something a grass. Are there any plants that are almost grasses but not quite that are related?
One of the common threads between most (if not all) grasses is that they incorporate silica into their stems and leaves, basically microscopic sand. It takes special teeth to eat large amounts of it without wearing them away completely.
Grasses are evolutionarily recent. The HUGE innovation that grasses came up with compared to every plant before them is that they grow from the ground...hang on I mean they grow from the base of the leaf tissue. All other plants grow at the tips of the leaves. Something eats the tip and you have to waste all that energy growing a whole new structure. Grass grows from the base, right by the roots. Graze away herbivores!
Needless to say grasses were EXTREMELY successful right out the gate and took over an entire swath of the climate! Anything too dry for trees but not a desert was very quickly turned into grassland worldwide
Grass-like sedges, sedge-like grasses, and ofc the rushes... we can't always even tell very easily what qualifies as a grass. Grasses can be surprisingly confounding for something we take for granted as a stock earth-carpet for us to walk on.
hay
Monocots are extensively studied, in part because they are so important to our own food supplies. Type in "monocot evolution" into *Google scholar* and see what you get. And if you want to be more specific to grasses, try "poales evolution".
“But I don’t do that, because I don’t want to.” 😂 My thoughts exactly bro.
Best line I've heard all day and the emphasis was perfect!
I really appreciate how consistently you guys upload!!!
Their consistency added with the legitimate and authentic facts they provide is what attracts me the most to this channel.
@@sudiptochaki9212 Yea and it's always something new that intrigues me. Def one of my favourite channels
This channel is one of my favorite places to start learning something. If I want to know more, I do additional research, but SciShow is I almost always begin.
Same! It answers questions I hadn't even thought about asking, but are super interesting, and start me down a rabbit hole. I love it!
It's also possible of course that the neck didn't even appear as long as it is due to soft tissue... consider the humble penguin - a neck nearly as long as the entire rest of its body, but unless you actually stop to think about it, it certainly doesn't seem that way at first glance.
Oh i had no idea! The illusion is probably helped by the bipedalism as well 😔
Penguin skeletons are wild. Check out those knees.
@@RoxaneJ14owl skeletons are a great example, too.
Makes their head turning seem less surprising, but it's still impressive.
That's one way to think of reconstructuons if you consider the square-cube law and its center of gravity it just falls apart quick.
I suspect the stance of sauropods would limit how much flesh was up front and no feathers on that group, just a lot of pebbly skin imprints. I am a fan of the ones with giant crests, those ones probably didn't have much uppy, actually most probably couldn't go uppy, but could pivot on hind legs to uppy. You can tell by the shape of the anatomy. We stopped breaking necks to do extreme uppy with front legs on ground a while ago. Also, don't forget uppy would be easiest for babies which may be the ones that needed it
"It's just plain fascinating."
Yep, that's about it!😂
(I mentioned this in a reply, but I thought it belongs in a comment.)
Holding their heads up, or out, requires a lot of strength that they may not have had. And there’s also the blood pressure issue.
So, raising their heads is problematic, UNLESS they are wading in deep water.
Another commenter suggested that the long neck enabled them to reach down low to get food. Another interesting and compelling idea.
The most complete sauropod neck fossil was at the Eccle's Dinosaur Park in Ogden, Utah. I think it was traded in an exhibit trade with the University of Utah's Natural History Museum. Point is, if you like sauropods, Utah is the choice location. Call the Eccle's Dinosaur Park if you want to know where the neck is now.
Argentina is the other big place. That's where some of the biggest have been found
@@sagetmaster4 Certainly for titanosaurus
Utah - Longneck territory
@2:29
High-quality Scishow out-of-context material, right there.
I miss 'Dippy' from London's Natural History Museum.
Reid's not interested in running 10 miles.
But I'm glad he's interested in doing research and then presenting the information to us.
one reason why i do not believe that long necks also were tall necks is that i look at the whole animal.
you look at the modern tall neck animal and what do you see? thin, long legs (the forelegs being longer than the hind legs too), built for traversing long distances and especially not for power or bearing a lot of weight.
you look at a giant sauropod and you see the opposite of that most of the time, they have thick, sturdy legs, built for bearing weight... a lot of weight, and with this weight comes power, and with that power I'd find myself asking the question why i would bother with lifting my neck up, when i could just make the tree come down instead.
Actually, sauropods had strangely dainty legs for their size. They even stood on their front feet like hooved animals, in which they stand at the ACTUAL tip of their toes, such that it doesn't even look like they HAD toes. Their back legs were a bit thicker and sturdier, but they still weren't the thick elephantine legs most people associate with them.
Their legs are certainly thicker and shorter than what you see in modern tall necked animals, but also, they were extremely large animals and wouldn't be able to walk on super long, skinny legs. They did their best, but they couldn't go all the way like a giraffe or antelope could.
They could theoretically make some trees come down when needed. But it's a lot easier to just use your already long neck to reach up than to exert energy knocking it over. Especially if your neck is already up when at rest. Plus we know they could stand on their hind legs to reach high up, too.
SciShow is my daily knowledge meal. Love you guys!
Diplodocus was my favourite as a kid. Just sounded good.
4:36
The decapitated dinos made me do a double take 😂
Not decapitated, just really, really small heads facing towards us, so it blends into the neck.
For a sauropod to raise its head twelve meter high I'd think very high blood pressure at the base would be necessary to supply blood to the brain, right? But then if it suddenly lowered its head its blood pressure would also need to be lowered to prevent a hemorrhagic catastrophe, right? I keep imagining how gruesome that would be. Do giraffes ever have this issue?
Some quick Googling says that giraffes have higher blood pressure and heart rates than would be expected for animals their size; also, their heart is "lopsided", with the left ventricle being much thicker and stronger to create the pressure needed to get the blood up to the head. Also, their heartbeat is weird to allow for more blood to enter the ventricle before pumping, allowing for greater pressure.
However, to your point, it sounds like we're not sure yet how they lower and raise their heads without cranial blood pressure going haywire. I bet if we could figure that out, it might lead to potential treatments for people suffering from issues like POTS, where that varying blood pressure can be debilitating. Also, despite the thickening of the left ventricle (a result of the high blood pressure), giraffes don't seem to develop fibrosis like people with chronic high blood pressure do. That's another interesting line of research with human healthcare implications.
Super interesting question, thanks for giving me a reason to Google that. 😁
Super fascinating answer, thank you for Googling that! (I could have just as easily, idky I didn't think to🤔)
Another oddity is the air sacs dinosaurs have. Big as they are, dinosaurs aren't as dense as mammals.
No idea how that might impact blood pressure, but perhaps air sacs could have supported their cardiovascular system in some way?
(Wide speculation, but not entirely baseless.)
@@727Phoenix Because sometimes it's fun to ask questions and speculate! Also, sometimes you get an actual expert to respond instead of just some nerd with Google, lol.
Valves, long necked animals have powerful valves and sometimes something a bit akin to a tiny booster "heart" though the latter is not common in vertebrates. Everyone always thinks of giraffes, but birds, turtles, and invertebrates also do the necks and are likely better analogies given how extra restrictive mammal anatomy is (just a mammal thing, out genetics are less flexible so mutations end up dead instead of weird and alive more often, mammals are in an evolutionary valley for a lot of traits.
Imagining two sauropods neck fighting like giraffes- absolutely terrifying, thank you 😂
The answer for such a diverse group of animals with a massive size change with age is almost certainly all of the above. Oh good the video included that. You never disappoint 😊😊
Also, long neck may have started as edge for babies and got repurposed by adults and later species. Long necks held up is an edge for babies, provided babies didn't live off of parent poop which is also possible. One thing I am quite sure of though is that these animals almost certainly lived off bacteria fed by plant matter rather than the plants directly. They have fermentation vat written all over them.
I really enjoyed this as the long neck dinosaurs are my favourite Dino’s.
I’m just imagining them roaming through redwood size trees and going high into the trees to eat
I was thinking of avian dinosaurs with long neck, when they rest the neck is always s-shaped. Maybe this was the same for sauropods.
Awesome video!!! I was waiting for you to talk about cranial perfusion against high pressure of gravity 😢
Will you guys talk about the science of smell?
You have a point! big difference between totally capable of doing it and, had to or felt like it
dogs missing their front legs can get around just fine hopping on their hind legs alone, they can do it
but they don't want to and the vast majority of them don't have a reason to
dinosaurs are awesome please more videos
"All brontosauruses are thin at one end, much, much thicker in the middle, and then thin again at the far end.";
A. Elk, {Miss}
I always wonder if Sauropods and Giraffes get blood pressure
So… giraffe neck, cobra neck, horse neck, ostrich neck, moose neck, vulture neck, or emu neck?
We don’t know. But there were a whole lot. So… yes? Is the fun (and more likely) answer
I have always wondered if the sauropods handled the "blood pressure in the brain" problem the same way giraffes do. Any ideas?
I still can't understand how high their blood pressure would need to be to get it up to such extreme distances above their hearts.
That might be part of the reason they has such small brains. Less blood needed.
Thank-you
Love the Dino vids, my favorite
I just want to know how they laid eggs without them breaking.
We don't know. Maybe they crouched when laying, or maybe they had fleshy egg tubes like turtles.
I somehow never thought of necking sauropods before, but man, that would sure be something to see.
Imagine the size of one of those sauropods hearts! Had to have been massive to pump so much weight/volume of blood up such a long neck if they were vertical. All i can imagine is a heart the size of a Volkswagen bug 😂
Awesome vid ❤🎉😂
It's entirely possible that they're next we're able to reach 30 ft underwater to grab rich in from the bottom of the ocean or the lakes. It's entirely possible that they never lifted their head up ever. And only actually put the head down low
Y'all did him dirty with that background
Not too many years ago, the theory was that these animals must be aquatic because the water was needed to support that long neck. How things have changed!
I’m not sure that things have changed, other than people ignoring a good theory.
I was going to mention the aquatic theory. But you got in first. The idea is: they couldn’t hold their necks up high, or straight out, for that matter, due to the extreme strength needed. Plus there’s the blood pressure issue, as some have mentioned.
UNLESS, they were wading in water up to their heads.
Without a complete skeleton, how do we know how many vertebrae they had?
We have complete necks.
We have a handful of complete sauropod necks. At Mike Taylor's last count, it was 14 published complete sauropod cervical series out of 100s of fossil skeletons = 2 x basal sauropods, 4 x Camarasaurus, 2 x diplodocoids, 3x mamenchisaurs and 3x titanosaurs.
Last I heard, we weren't even sure why giraffes have such long necks, and they're alive.
Holding the neck out straight horizontally. Can today's engineer even design a support that would hold the bones of that skull out that horizontal distance?
Hey Scishow complete. Thanks for the boundless education and incredible variety of topics over they years. My auDHD has absorbed and stored this knowledge allowing me to be a social pariah of knowledge and wisdom. 😂
Well if they listened to the Psy family of channels, they too would know. 😊
my earth science teacher in college who studied them. said for many they think it was more for standing in place and moving around the ground like a lawn mower rather than always trees. the idea being a long neck allows you to reach more grass without moving and moving that big is a lot of energy.
rather than specifically for trees which you wouldnt even really need to be that big to reach.
another thing we discussed is the "why not both" an interesting thing in dinosaurs is there isnt really many medium sized predators. there are small large. the believed reason for this is obviously a young trex is basically a medium predator so it filled that niche until it became an adult and then was a large predator.
long necks could easy start on low tree or grass and than as it gets older swap to the other. allowing the young and adults while able to eat both each to have a specialty. this would prevent overlap and food shortages and again works for allowing a lot of grazing in 1 area without much moving which as mentioned was costly energy wise.
When I first heard the voice it sounded like Paul Heyman 😆
what if sauropods live in water and the neck is long so they can breath air, their heavy body is easier to support itself if its underwater
Why no question like: Necks were long enough to keep heads above water?
Couldn`t they just estimate how big the heart must have been to pump blood to the brain if the animal`s head is 20 m above ground?
3:15 - Many of those look like they'd be too front heavy and tip forwards. Seems their heads and necks would have to be more upright to balance out.
I’d take another man’s life to go back and see these things with my own eyes 😩
The book 'Good Enough' by Daniel S. Milo discusses the many theories about evolution, beginning with why the giraffe has such a long neck. One of the main theories he discusses is how evolutionary changes in animals don't have to be better than before, they just need to not be detrimental enough to kill the animal before it can pass on the trait.
If you have a 15 meter long neck how long would it take for the food to travel to the stomach?
Nah, if someone saw your skeleton, they'd say, "Damn! That's one big ass head!!"
Lol, love the channel. Please keep it up, forever
Sauropods are my favorite dinosaurs (:
The man's right about the giraffes. Search up "giraffe neck fighting" and see for yourselves. It would be quite the sight to see, though, how the much bigger and heavier long-neck dinos would neck fight (if they did so).
May be even good for a snorkel in deep water
We're still quite bad at understanding how human necks work, despite billions of living examples and no end of motivation.
"but iondodat. cuzidone want to."
DO IT.
Back then the trees were super tall according to everything I've seen.
Great video! At 4:32 two dynos have no heads lol, probably because it's an AI-generated image
It would be extremely difficult to support these long necks if they were horizontal. Even giraffes today are a good example. Try holding a log ahead of you, then try to balance it on its cross section vertically. There'd have to be some very powerful neck muscles to support it horizontally at all times. On land these would be much more efficient straight up, hence the taller shoulders as they carry the additional weight. This gives extra reach for feeding.
Things would be very different in the many shallow seas of that era. The body could be under water almost all of the time like hippos, and the long necks would float up and above. If the depth is very low, the neck can be horizontal or close to it, with far reach and with flotation as a major help. Migrations on land would have been a pain in the neck though.
I feel like I'm learning less with many videos you guys put out the last 2 years but this one is an exception. This was very informative.
I am inclined to believe they couldn't raise their necks because of neck bones or so, but literally everything i learned in history has been debunked by now, so I just gonna check out if I have to add another one to the "dinosaurs aren't anything like i believed." list, I mean, they were maybe birds? Just plain old regular birds but giant? Thats so adorable and I don't care if thats true, the underfeathering thing is absolutely my head cannon, there once roamed choccobo among the earth (maybe).
Chocobos always existed-we call them emus
@@Delmworks no I mean like colored Chocobo, its not a chocobo if you can't raise a... was it golden? I think it was golden.
@@537zun4 ostrich.
Alas, sauropod skin prints are abundant and they appear to be pebbly elephants skin wise. It makes sense, if they were fermentation vats they would need to shed heat.
You have it reversed. Dinosaurs aren't birds, birds are dinosaurs.
What if they held their necks like swans and turkeys?
Giraffes have special blood vessels in their legs. Otherwise, they would burst from the high pressure when standing up.
If I'm not mistaken, it's generally thought that they would hold their neck straight up or partially held up, depending on the species
I'm kinda surprised he didn't mention defense. In the book The Lost World, Michael Crichton used the theory that the long necks were used as a counterbalance for the long tails, which they used as weapons. Also, they didn't lift their heads up very often but that they could if needed.
I mean, giraffes just use their necks and heads as weapons (with each other)
Crichton was a fiction writer, not a paleontologist. He was also behind the idea that T-Rex couldn't see you if you don't move
@Daft_Vader true, but even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and there is some merit to speculation as long as one doesn't get too attached to the ideas. It's how to form a hypothesis. But a hypothesis is useless until you've tested it. A good way to test this would be to model a sauropod as closely as possible, then remove the length of the neck and see how that affects the balance.
However, a short neck with a larger head would achieve the same counter-balance unless it uses a swinging motion with the head as well as the tail. But if that was the case, moving the head that fast would almost certainly cause an aneurysm, centerfugal force is rough on the limbic and vascular systems.
@danielled8665 I see your point. I have a counterpoint for you. What if the longer neck were used for increasing the visual range in which they can see? They could have used it for things like making sure they don't step on the nest or the young ones, looking around their own body for predators and seeing where to swing at.
@@Daft_VaderHave you ever read one of his books? He does extensive research and every one has several pages of citations.
Make that Davide B picture a puzzle!
Well, it would make sense that they were, atleast early on, used to spot predators coming, where there's food at distance as well as reaching food. However that doesn't mean they remained tall and if not tall, doesn't inherently mean they couldn't become tall, even if that's not the resting state.
It's about movement...you see, the Sauropod shape is the key....while walking, the neck sticks out opposite to the tail, giving balance on the fulcrum-body....when eating, the tail goes down while the head goes up, giving a tripod stance for balance with tail/legs/hips in order to raise and support the neck...it is a logical body plan of evolution! 😊😁🦕
Instead of looking at giraffes, why aren't scientists looking at long-necked birds, like ostriches?
please review the Quetzal next. its worth a video.
So maybe the guess in Jurassic Park was accurate when the character of Grant stammers, 'This is a warm blooded creature" You would think in order to power that brain atop the neck, like the giraffe, it has to be warm blooded.
Thank you, science Squirrely Dan
Eichiro Oda knows how the dinosaurs got down
I'm gunna stick my neck out a bit, and admit I didn't learn anything from this. It all went over my head.
LOL
I don't know, but I think the guess of the past that shorter tail with long neck is likely going for stuff high up while longer tail and long neck is more likely to go for stuff at a lower height.
For safety reasons I think going for stuff high up is probably safer given the neck would be harder to reach for most predators
Saropods- ancient girraffe like lizards on steroids
I always wonder why we dont think they used their necks like chickens. Like when at rest it is s shaped and not stretched out
I believe sauropod necks pointed some degree above horizontal and toward the sky. "Why?" Because there is no evidence of sauropod skulls containing hearts. If sauropod necks pointed downward, blood would pool in their heads and there'd be no way for it to get back to the animal's torso. If sauropods held their heads some degree of high, pressure and gravity would return blood from their heads back down to their heart. That's just my gut instinct.
Is kind of depressing that we might never know. I want to know. My curiosity cannot be sated.
Could we look at the type of vegetation in their coprolites to see what level of the trees they were eating? There must be some differences between the tops of trees and low growing vegetation.
I am curious about the number of vertebrae these long necks have.
In mammals, the giraffe has the same number as any other mammal. But they became elongated to enable grazing on tall trees.
Do sauropods have the same thing - an identical number of vertebrae as their short-necked cousins?
Somthing that adds some really funny images to think about is :
Look at a penguin (you probably think kinda stubby neck)
Then look up a penguin skeleton (they got some surprisingly long necks)
Now image these guys the same 😅
I've scrolled through many a comment. And i have yet to find another Horizon player who read the word Tallneck and immediately thought of the only machine not intentionally trying to kill you.
So what about their blood pressure? Would it even be theoretically possible to get their heads 20m high without passing out or rupturing their arteries?
1:07 Look at that "artist's depiction" and calculate the blood pressure, necessary for this posture. To imagine, how they lived is easy, if we don't fall for children's books illustrations. They certainly didn't roam like giraffes; they would have been easy prey for DinosarusRex.
Whose present days animals do they resemble? For me, they look similar to a mixture of Swans mixed with Rhinos; and this leads to their habitat: in shallow, or not-so-shallow, warm waters, without predators! (no sharks, no crocodiles)
Could they swim? Maybe, but it looks like they preferred to walk in the mud and feed plenty of seaweed.
That was the easy part, the difficult one is: how did Sauropods breed, where did they lay their eggs, they weren't mammals, weren't they?
Got to get some deep learning ai network to guess what animals looked like from their bones
Hypothesis: The long neck was full of small stomach like organs, in order to start the digesting process for the tough plant material they ate. Kind of like birds
Idk Giraffes have their heads down while eating...im going with that
All of my dinosaur posture ideas come from Land Before Time