Tag: Animals Nonfiction

Before 1965, killer whales were widely regarded as dangerous animals, considered pests by fishermen, often shot at and killed without any restrictions by fishermen, whalers and government agencies alike. That started to change when one man, Ted Griffin, braved getting in the water with a captured killer whale. His action was unprecedented and sensational, drawing shocked and astonished crowds of people who would had never seen a whale up close, never would have dared to approach one. Before long there was a scramble to catch more orcas and keep them alive- up to this point they had always been sent to rendering plants or dissected for scientific study. Methods were crude and rough at first, lots of whales died, and plenty that were caught didn’t last longer than a year in captivity- if even that. But within the short span of a decade, public opinion about orcas had flipped completely. Far from being viewed as dangerous, vicious beasts, they were beloved and admired by many. Which was only possible because one person thought to keep a whale confined, and show others it didn’t automatically attack (or eat people).

Gradually, though, the more orcas that were caught and put in pools, pens and even (temporarily) fish ponds, the more people began to wonder if this was a bad idea. Finally able to study orcas up close, scientists began to learn more about their acoustic sensitivity, their close social bonds, even the differences between pods that ate fish and others that only fed on mammals (unknown before). When someone finally realized how to individually identify and track orcas, family structures were teased out, and population counts were finally conducted. The public started to clamor for whales to be protected instead of pursued, and many protested their being kept in captivity at all. Lots of mishaps in this book, there’s accounts of Luna and Keiko and others. The narrative doesn’t dwell on the stress and poor health the whales experienced in captivity, though. Mostly the focus is on the people. People who first tried to catch whales, who tried to study them, who trained them and worked to protect them and all kinds of competition and political friction around their welfare. It can get hard to keep all the names straight- after a while I quit trying much, reading lightly to get a general impression. There’s a nice personal touch brought in by the many interviews, the author having travelled to visit with men who were involved in the early heyday of live orca shows, getting personal stories, opinions and viewpoints not often shared before. Overall it’s a detailed historical account of how public opinion changed so quickly about this one whale species. I much prefer stories with more depth about singular individuals, so that’s the only reason why I considered this book good and not great. However it was interesting enough that I made the effort to finish. Very well-researched, extensive notes and references. I have a long list of new titles to look for, thanks to this one.

I actually liked reading the history in this book, because much of it took place in the Puget Sound region, where I grew up. Lots of details of maritime culture, fishing and whaling industries and how they changed, things about the Seattle waterfront, and brief mention of how native tribes viewed the killer whale. One small thing I could somewhat relate to- Ivar’s. I’ve been to the famous Ivar’s seafood restaurant with my family (once). I didn’t know that originally the man Ivar Haglund also ran a small public aquarium. When it folded he kept the adjoining restaurant going.

Side note: this book has the best organized endnotes I have ever seen. Usually it’s kind of tedious to find the endnote at the back of the book that you’re looking for, so I’ll keep a separate bookmark back there if I wanted to frequently look for more information. In this volume, the endnote pages had the span of origin pages marked in each top margin, which made it very easy to find them! It’s a small thing, but I really liked that feature.

Borrowed from the public library.

It’s a tad disappointing that this book was on my TBR list for eight years, and now that I finally got a chance to read it, I just wasn’t that awestruck. It’s another photograph-heavy coffee-table sized book, companion to The Hidden Life of Wolves. (I thought at first this one had been published later, but actually it came first). The project it was based on is described in Wolves At Our Door. Having already read those other two books, this one offers very little new or different info. It’s actually somewhat repetitive inside its own pages. There’s parts that describe (briefly) the filming project, the social structure of the wolf pack, their hunting skills and involved care of the young. There’s very little narrative of actual incidents- but two stand out to my mind in particular: the wolves’ reaction when a raven died, and how they were observed eating flowers (shooting stars) in a field, every spring (but nobody was sure why). Everything else was nice- but for me, not much more than that. The photographs really are beautiful and expressive, but also a bit grainy, not with the clarity of focus or printing as nowadays. For it’s time this is a gorgeous book, but I can’t help comparing it to other things I’ve read before that were written since, and it doesn’t stand up as excellent in that regard. All that said, I am holding onto it!

What I really want is to see the films these authors have produced- about wolves, and cougars. Haven’t been able to find them available anywhere (aside from buying my own dvd that is).

The author wanted to see a coyote. Not in a zoo or research center (though she did visit one where litters of coyote pups were being raised), but out free in the wild. Near her house. This book is about all sorts of things circling around the coyote. Sometimes it doesn’t sit well with me when a book purportedly about an animal, tends to be just as much about the author’s personal life. In this case, I didn’t mind- I found that part interesting and relevant, but I can see why another reviewer complained about it. She talks about the landscape, her reasons for moving away from the area and back home again, her fears of the family’s reactions to her partner (she’s lesbian), her trans friend visiting, how she attempts to thwart deer and other animals from eating her garden (I can relate!), looking for a fox den, the history of wildlife management where she lives (and all over the States, really), etc. The parts about coyotes range from how they’ve been persecuted to their interbreeding with wolves. There’s plenty of musings on how close coyotes are related to red wolves or Mexican wolves, and where do you draw the line to define a species. Because is the Eastern coyote a coyote/wolf hybrid, or a coyote evolving into a distinct species- larger than its western counterpart, with subtle but distinctive differences in how it hunts, how its pups play, and so on. A lot of those differences align more with the habits of wolves, so thus the confusion. There was a lot in here about coyotes and wolves and their interrelationship with man (in general) that I hadn’t thought on before. I knew that coyotes eat cats and small dogs, I didn’t know they would attempt to make off with a small child- many incidents of toddlers being accosted by coyotes in here. And in the end, the very last chapter, she does finally catch a fleeting glimpse of a coyote, out in the wild. Pervasive, persistent, elusive creature. Like so many other animals– they are surviving around and in spite of us because they’re successful.

Borrowed from the public library.

Animals and science. This one was a bit slow for me to get through. I enjoyed all the things I learned about exactly how animals do things (though some details are still undiscovered, or at least at the time of this publication), but I didn’t always grasp the explanations, even though I could tell the author was simplifying matters for the general reader. In a nice way. And when equations came into the mix, my focus would start to slide. Mathematics and physics not really my thing. But I’m game to try and comprehend.

This book delves into heat conduction and energy transfer, Newton’s laws of motion, the properties of fluids and what that means for animals that move through it, on top of it, or simply want to avoid turbulence (in water or air); sound vibrations and how animals use or exploit them, likewise with electricity and magnetism, curious properties of how light travels, and quantum physics. I admit I got lost a few times. But the main subject- the animals- kept drawing my curiosity back to continue.

Some of the things I learned: some garter snakes pretend to be female to steal heat from others. Ground squirrels fight rattlesnakes by bluffing with their tails- about their size- via heat conductivity. Dwarf seahorses are super sneaky. Bees find flowers and detect if other bees have already visited them, via perception of electric fields. Oriental hornets can absorb sunlight and save it as energy using a pigment called xanthopterin! Ants navigate by polarized light- so they can find their way even on cloudy days. And there’s so much more, from how archerfish hit their targets in spite of light refraction through water, to why giant squids have such huge eyes and how geckos manage to walk on the ceiling, to the ways many other animals’ bodies work within and exploit the laws of physics- from harlequin mantis shrimp, bats, sea turtles, cuckoo chicks, elephants, bees, spiny lobsters and peacocks (shivering their tail feather display to create sounds outside the range of human hearing- but apparently very alluring to peahens), komodo dragons and mosquitoes, to your ordinary cats and dogs. Fascinating stuff, if also a bit tiresome. (It was a good go-to-sleep-at-night book).

Borrowed from the public library.