Re: Phytodinosaur stance

["Nicholas R. Longrich" <longrich@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>]

On Fri, 19 Jan 1996 Stang1996@aol.com wrote:

> Sleeping while standing up:
> I suspect the only dinosaurs capable of locking their knees so as to sleep
> while standing up, would be the ones least apt to do that.  I am speaking of
> sauropods.  They are capable of locking their knees (maybe), but I doubt that
> they would because I don't think that they did much sleeping (if any at all),
> and of course we all know that this can be proven one way or the other ; ).
>  I think that, because they were so large and had such small mouths they
> needed to eat almost constantly, and any time not spent feeding (i.e.
> sleeping) was in a way wasted.
        I agree on the ceratopsians, but sauropods wouldn't necessarily 
have had to fed constantly. They did have small mouths, but the mouths 
didn't need to do anything other than strip foliage- no time wasted chewing.
        And while the absolute amount of food required by something like 
an Argentinosaurus was huge, the relative amount would have been low. 
animals that need a constant supply of food are tiny animals like shrews 
and hummingbirds. Hummingbirds have so much proportional surface area 
that they have to go into a sort of hibernation every night or starve. 
Bigger animals, with a lot less surface area, can go a lot longer without 
food. A bear can sleep through an entire winter on its fat reserves 
(granted, at a lower metabolic rate). A smaller animal, with more 
proportional surface area, and hence, wasted heat, can't. I saw some 
documentary on Yellowstone years ago, and what it showed was that small 
animals (it was some sort of small rodent) do enter hibernation, but 
frequently must wake up and feed themselves from their stashes to prevent 
themselves from starving to death. An animal's size insulates it and makes 
it a lot more efficient, even if the absolute amount of food increases. 
So sauropods might actually have been able to endure long periods without 
food.
        -nick L.