...plant material at a time, and we’re talking about something huge.

 

Surprisingly, it isn’t something huge which allows these giant herbivores to grow big enough to be all but invincible. In fact, it’s something incredibly small, and something meat eaters lack. 

 

Below Sauroposeidon’s stomach are two gigantic organs called ceca, similar to our appendix. Humans stopped using an appendix thousands of years ago when we started eating meat. A Sauroposeidon would die without one. The ceca are home to millions of microscopic organisms. They break down the tough, fibrous walls of plant cells. 

 

It has this whole little world inside of microbes that’s helping it digest its food, that send in little tendrils that help break open those cell walls, helps liberate those nutrients, and that’s what helps the animal survive.

 

And the result of this incredible feat of engineering is one final trick that keeps predators at bay. 

 

Sauropods were probably burping and farting almost continuously, because that’s what big plant eaters do. And they would have been noisy, smelly, unpleasant animals to be around. 

 

Despite all these adaptations, all of this specialized biology that has allowed Sauroposeidon to grow to mammoth proportions, there’s one part of its body that simply hasn’t kept up, its brain. 

 

Animals like Sauroposeidon are really the poster child for the dumb dinosaur.

 

Sauroposeidon has a brain less than a thousandth of its body size—the equivalent of a human…