So I built a stegosaurus model kit, which included some factoids in the instructions. One of these factoids was that stegosaurs are not believed to have had a secondary brain in the hips to help them control their rear half after all. That was wild to me, since the whole stegosaurs and sauropods with their tiny heads needing a secondary brain for their huge bodies was commonly accepted back when I was a kid. So I looked it up, and indeed, the current hypothesis is that the cavity that the second brain was thought to occupy is used for a thing called a glycogen body. But what exactly does a glycogen body do? We’ll get back to you on that, apparently.
Also brontosaurus is a separate species again, microraptos were black and anurognathus is extremely cute
TIL a second hip brain was once a theory.
If be interested to know where and when that was considered a fact, because I’m 45 and never heard that before.
I’m 40 and remember being told that the Brontosaurus had multiple smaller brains down it’s spine so that it could react to stimuli without having to wait for the signal to get all the way to its head and back.
I also rember hearing at some point more recently that the Brontosaurus probably didn’t exist. 🤷
tbf that’s sorta true, they didn’t have “mini-brains” but stuff like severe pain signals get processed in the spine, since every millisecond matters when you’re absentmindedly stepping onto smouldering coal. That’s why reflexes are reflexive, the brain isn’t even involved at all.
That’s true of all vertebrates, including you!
- It was taken as a given. And my finest ever teacher was a hippy, from 1st though 6th grade. She was the best of the best, taught us what was known, at the time.
It does make you wonder how many things we’ve all been carrying around in our heads since childhood, that were just passed down through generations without any amount of checking.
Chances are she was taught it when she was at school, by somebody else who was taught it when they were at school. Before the internet it was kind of hard to look shit like that up, and encyclopaedias might not have covered it either. UNless you spent your life delving into a specific area, the edges of knowledge were (and still are) kind of fuzzy.
“Going out with wet hair gives you a cold” No, viruses from shit indoor air quality and smoke from indoor fires inflaming your mucous membranes gives you a cold.
I’d heard of it.
I’ve heard of it.
And could still be true.
https://animaltriangle.com/animals-with-multiple-brains/
Edit: See my later comment on more sources on bones. Fr guys, I have no idea either way, but if you’re going to say my source is full of shit, provide your own legit sources to back you up.
Edit 2: If you continue down this thread, there’s a lot of trolling going on. This could be for 2 purposes, make me look like an unreliable source (on biology, that might be true) and ruin the vibe.
I can’t speak for every creature in this source but practically everything it says about turtles is a straight fabrication. They have one brain. It’s oddly shaped but just one. Next, it’s in their skull, not their neck - that’s crazy. Finally, TURTLES HAVE BONES WTF
What the fuck is that article? It’s absolute nonsense. Like a first gen AI was trained on a single biology textbook.
The mosquito brain has three main parts: the antennae, the maxillary palps, and the proboscis.
Octopuses don’t have any real social structure like mammals do. Instead, they communicate through chemical signals. But these chemicals can transmit emotions just as effectively as words and they have two eyes.
Animals with multiple brains include octopuses, cephalopods (squid), and even humans.
The brain of a cuttlefish is located in the head, which is made up of two parts: the upper part contains the eyes, and the lower part contains the mouth.
Cuttlefish is one of the smartest animals in the world. They are able to solve complex mathematical equations
You didn’t know that cuttlefish can derive non-trivial solutions of the Einstein field equations? They can solve all ten at once because they have ten brains.
I thought you were trolling. But, no. Those quotes are actually in the linked article (original, archive link 1, and archive link 2 for posterity). Wtf
Edit: archive links.
The entire website is like that. Except nearly every article is
"These are the only 27 animals that have blue eyes!
Humans are the only species with blue eyes
Other species with blue eyes include the Siberian Huskie, the Great Dane, and the Dalmatian
May I ask how you found this absolute train wreck of a website?
I mean, yes, but… What other vertebrates have developed a secondary brain? That’s a big deal evolutionarily, considering all other vertebrates have the one.
It’s been theorized that our digestive system acts as a sort of second brain.
Isn’t that mostly pushed by the vaccines-cause-autism guy?
No idea who you are talking about, but it’s well known that we have a really large and complex neuron structure spread through our digestive system.
Nobody calls it a brain just because it’s not an organ.
There is SO MUCH to unpack on this subject. We’re just now figuring out how our gut biome influences the rest of our body and mind, as if those are separate things. :)
Turtles have two brains. The first brain is located in the head and controls the eyes, ears, mouth, and other senses. The second brain is located in the neck region and controls the legs, tail, and other body parts.
The brain of a turtle is much like ours, except for one big difference: they don’t have any bones. Their skulls are made up of cartilage instead of bone. This means that their skulls are flexible and can change shape to adapt to different situations.
Edit:
Source 2:
Turtles possess a unique protective shell, leading to questions about its nature. In fact, turtles do have bones, and their shell is an integral, living component of their skeletal system, not a separate structure they can leave. This remarkable shell provides comprehensive protection, housing all their internal organs.
https://biologyinsights.com/do-turtles-have-bones-explaining-their-skeleton/
Source 3:
.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle#/media/File:How_the_Turtle_Gets_its_Shell.svg
Looks like turtles have bones and you all flunked biology class. I didn’t flunk, but I didn’t pass with flying colors, so I have no idea on any of this shit.
Turtles don’t have bones? Is this satire?
How are you finding these sites? They’re both AI generated ad farms with absolutely no seo. This one at least seems credible but it’s just bizarre. It’s literally just random science-adjacent Q&As on a science-adjacent URL with no other info. It’s like a liminal space of online pseudo science. The biology backrooms.
- I stand corrected… And impressed.
- That link wasn’t in your answer a minute ago.
This isn’t true, the other poster’s source is likely AI generated. Turtles certainly have unique brain structures, but it’s still considered one brain with multiple regions. And these regions are all within the skull, not the neck.
EDIT: Just read their source again and they state turtles don’t have bones. Wow.
Haha I missed that clear horrendously nonsense statement! F-ing social media doom-scroll-disease! After all, what respectable vertebrate would lack any bones?!
It gets better. Apparently, we all have multiple brains.
Animals with multiple brains include octopuses, cephalopods (squid), and even humans.
It says leeches have 32 brains, pea sized, with 400 neurons, and 500 different types of neurons. Yeah, that’s clearly bullshit.
Sorry about that, I edited it in. I’m a little in shock that there are animals that have more than one brain.
S’all good, man.
make me look like an unreliable source (on biology, that might be true)
On what topics are you a reliable source?
Not sure if you’re trolling or just a bit lost mate but you’re the only one who’s posted a source claiming turtles don’t have bones. Everyone else is aware that turtles have bones.
E: Ah a troll after all. Started half good but honestly turned to shit pretty quick. 4/10. Turtles may have 1 brain but you, my friend, have 0.
it’s at least true for me tbh
Edit 2: If you continue down this thread, there’s a lot of trolling going on. This could be for 2 purposes, make me look like an unreliable source (on biology, that might be true) and ruin the vibe.
lmfao are you fucking joking? you made yourself look like an unreliable source by referring to such a dogshit website/article. it actually required zero help from anybody else to shoot your credibility.
TIL people used to think that dinosaurs had a 2nd brain
I’m 54 and had a life-changing hippy teacher teach us elementary science. I believed this.
Blow your mind? In the 80s, not every geologist was onboard with plate tectonics.
Man i’m only 40 and the shit i learned in school is actually kind of crazy. When i was around 8, the ozone hole was kind of a big deal. FCKW was everywhere and it was the number one threat, next to climate change itself. One day it was really cold and i made a joke like: “the ozone hole is supposed to burn us, but it’s so cold outside.” My teacher heard that and fraked out. He said that we have no idea how lucky we are, in New Zealand, children can’t even go on the streets without special suits, because they are right under the ozone hole.
I was 8, i heard New Zealand for the first time, i had no idea where or what it was, i was to scared to even ask what happened to old Zealand, but i always imagined it’s literally scorched. I kinda stopped thinking about it unitl some years later when i watched a movie that was filmed in new Zealand and i was like:“motherfucker, it’s beautiful out there.”
In the summer our weather reports also include a “burn time” or a UV index. 15 minutes is typical.
I need to put sun screen on if I’m going to be outside for more than about 30 minutes at a time.
We’re melanoma capital of the world.
There’s no where else I’d rather be.
When I was a kid I didn’t read about a “2nd brain” but a series of ganglions that acted like relays down the spine. Supposedly the belief was the size of dinosaurs made it impossible for nerve signals to reach the brain from distant parts of the body in a timely manner so they had these relays that made it easier to have reflex responses while the signal was being passed on to the brain.
The idea stemmed from misinterpretations of large cavities found in the hip region of some dinosaurs, like Stegosaurus. This cavity, which appeared somewhat brain-shaped, was likely a glycogen body, a structure similar to one found in modern birds, and its purpose in dinosaurs is not fully understood but may relate to energy storage or balance.
i mean, that is true in so much as all animals have them, that’s precisely why reflexes happen before we even realize it
i’d imagine even the tiniest field mice work like this, because it’s something the first animals evolved and it’s highly useful regardless of how long it takes signals to reach the brain.
This was more than just simple reflexes though, like minibrains.
I’ve never heard of the “second brain” thing
That doesn’t make any sense
There’s some precedent for it in octopi. They have “distributed” intelligence, where each arm has a dedicated nerve cluster “brain” that controls it.
It was a thing when I was a kid. The older you get the more of your basic education gets proved wrong.
Public school is great
When I was a kid they told me that different parts of the tongue have different taste buds
A surprising amount of teachers work like LLMs. No idea what they are talking about but extremely scared of admitting it.
I remember being told in school that Brontosaurus had a second brain because they were so big it would take to long for the impulses from their head to go to their tail.
Giraffes elephants and whales might have something to say there but frankly we’ve thought weirder stuff.
Or whales. They are even bigger with no secondary brain in sight.
I mean, easy to believe. Our goddamn nervous system acts kinda like one. Hell, we have more and more proof our left and right halves of brain ain’t actually the unified, but are basically two brains and personalities slapped together.
Glycogen is an energy storage molecule that is more easily accessible (easier to convert into glucose, what your cells actually burn) by the body than fat is. I would assume this organ was a dedicated store for it.
Edit: ah that’s what I get for commenting before reading the damn article. Scientists haven’t confirmed that it’s definitely an energy storage organ, but it’s one of the leading theories.
… was this just someone taking the “smart-ass” joke a bit too far?
/s
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I can anecdotally confirm as a “dinosaur kid” of the 80s, that this was a common tidbit in children’s books of the era.
I’m pretty sure I had a VHS with Fred Savage where they ran through it as well.
The explanation was that the response time if a Brontosaurus got its tail messed with (an anvil dropped on it) was problematicly slow if the nervous system had to send the message such a great distance to the “head brain” and then have the reaction message all the way back. Basically they’d be living with massive lag IRL.
Can’t say I’m surprised that science is backing off the certainty on that. Those same books were also full of “look at all the goofy things previous generations of paleontologists thought”
Yeah, I also remember the whole ’ second brain in the tail’ thing being a hypothesis back then
I’m pretty sure I had a VHS with Fred Savage where they ran through it as well.
Link to relevant scene (starts ~17:05)
Wow! The small brain in my butt responsible for nostalgia was blown!
The explanation was that the response time if a Brontosaurus got its tail messed with (an anvil dropped on it)
If a Brontosaurus needed to react to an anvil being dropped on its tail then I have more important questions.
Acme anvil, acme time machine… The knowledge that birds evolved from dinosaurs…
The answer is so obvious I’m glad you didn’t debase either of us by asking the question
People then were smoking cigarettes so who knows
Laughing that kids didn’t get taught this in the day! It was “common knowledge” when I was a child. And I had an excellent science teacher. That woman taught me empiricism and how to form an hypothesis and test it. We simply didn’t know in the 70s and 80s!
Doesn’t that already happen in the spine?
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I’m just telling you what was in children’s dinosaur books from the 80s, based on your response of never having heard of it.
What the gap between children’s books and scientific consensus at the time was, couldn’t tell you.
I think this sits in the realm of history more than science. “What were people writing at the time?”
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technically humans have a “second brain”.
your heart contains neurological tissue and a memory. does this mean your heart can have thoughts or a mind of itself? no.
neurological tissue doesn’t mean a whole brain function exists, but how else can you explain such a complex idea to a child?
your gut is also very complex (the vagus nerve in particular) and the microbes inside your digestive system can influence what food you want to eat.
yeah mine is a little too close to the surface and literally has a mind of its own. i let it take the driver’s seat once and it was not the best experience.
“why the fuck am i at the mcdonald’s parking lot?”
“and shitting at the taco bell parking lot”
Yes!
Some other organs too, to a lesser extend.And then the whole trillions of bacteria intellectual powerhouse (I’m mostly joking, but not absolutely completely joking).
The whole peripheral nervous system makes decisions without adult supervision from the brain all the time. I’d consider that to be a sort of distributed second brain in a way
My Dad would say I have a brain in my ass because my head was always up there.
what about octopus secondary hearts? human secondary brains?
Our digestive system has an extremely complex autonomous nervous system called the enteric nervous system (ENS), which is sometimes referred to as the “second brain”. So technically yes.
Not an expert in the field, but my understanding was there are parts of our own upper spinal cord/lower brain that handle very basic controls. For a much larger body could there just be a larger part like this for simple subconscious and reactionary commands?
Not upper, though. All through the spinal chord.
