Re: Long-necked stegosaur, head tail mimicry?

["Richard W. Travsky" <rtravsky@uwyo.edu>]

On Sun, 8 Mar 2009, David Marjanovic wrote:
> > We assume, like sauropods,
> > that stegosaurs are relatively slow moving, and the phrase
> > "sauropod-mimic"
> > is being freely used, so maybe, just maybe, this particular stegosaur was
> > doing just that. Not moving very much but being able to cover a lot more
> > ground whilst eating, moving the long neck in an arc, maximising the
> > energy
> > intake without moving very much. Just a thought.
>
> But is it even the case that holding the neck far out and moving it around
> costs less energy than walking a step?

There are millions of four legged animals on the planet today that graze, 
don't have long necks, and take steps to cover ground. So I tend to doubt 
why they'd adopt that sort of feeding strategy.

Now, a sauropod is usually bigger, and may well make sense to do things 
that way. Correlation with size and long necks?