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.
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.