Erich HoytAnmeldelser

Whales

Large format book for adults. Great photographic illustrations.

599.5

I loved the photographs in this book. The deep sea is always a fascinating subject, and the more photographs we have of it, the cooler it gets. The text is well written, and fits the photographs, so this is a much more coherent book than many photo-oriented coffee-table style books I've read lately. If you just want pretty pictures this book has plenty, but it is worth actually reading, too. The preachy stuff in the last few chapters got a bit annoying, though the idea of jellyfish as the ocean equivalent of noxious weeds seemed interesting enough to read more on later.

Before I get into how much I learned from this fascinating book, be warned the writing is a bit rough at times. Just look at the subtitle to the book for a clue. The grammar is imprecise and sometimes he uses the same or similar words too close together; one of my peeves.

Other than that it’s a terrific book and has some terrific photography. I’ve always been a sucker for ocean exploration. I blame Jacques Cousteau. I’m not a diver so have to live vicariously through those who are.

So here’s a few of the things I learned from this book -

>>How specialized are the eyes of the deep sea squid (histioteuthis sp.) are. One is permanently angled upward to look for prey above while the other is directed downward and is adapted to the bioluminescent flashes that other animals make at this depth. It can see prey in both directions at the same time.

**That anglerfish are so spread out from one another in the deep that when a male finds a female he literally fuses his body to hers. Eventually his circulatory system becomes connected to hers. Then his internal organs and eyes degenerate. He’s just a portable sperm bank at this point. I guess there weren’t many more fish in the sea!

^^Orcas eat sharks. Not just sleepy, placid sharks, but active, robust predators like the great white. Jeez. Scientists are also debating whether to break the orca into multiple species based on where they live and hunt and what they eat. Specialization is coming to light.

~~Total magnetic reversal! The magnetic polarity of the earth is changeable and has changed from north to south over 150 times in the last 85 million years. We can tell by ridges of rock left behind while the planet’s crust changed shape. Wow. Did not know.

{}The scaly foot snail has that name because it uses bits of iron to cover itself in little plates like armor. It lives on the hydrothermal-vent chimneys in the Dragon Vent Field and is the only known animal to use iron sulfide as a defense weapon.

There’s tons of stuff like this all through the book and even if you know a lot about marine life, you’re bound to find something you didn’t. Or just pick it up to marvel at the photos of rare and unthinkable animals. Make sure you get the second edition though, it’s about twice as thick as the first and has another decade of research in it. Great stuff.

I remember being so excited over seeing the pictures in a magazine of the very strange fish that live in The Mesopelagic Zone which is 660 feet to 3,300 feet below the surface of the ocean. Such strange looking fish! So I immediately picked this book to read on Amazon Vine and was not disappointed. Creatures of the Deep by Erich Hoyt, Second Edition Updated and Expanded is a delight!

Are you interested in the strange and newly discovered? We are just becoming aware of these creatures in the deepest parts of the ocean and there is so much more to discover. In the past, what lived in the deep oceans was considered to be monsters. The author thinks that we need to appreciate and protect them as our friends.

Creatures of the Deep is filled with gorgeous color photos of the inhabitants of the oceans. The general public is not familiar with most of them. The sea is stacked with layers of different ecosystems. This book shows representatives of the creatures that live in each layer and what is characteristic of each layer. Some of the pictures are so spectacular that you can only stare at them in wonder.

A variety of questions are answered. To tickle your fancy, here is a list of a few:

1. Does the octopus or squid have a more complex brain?
2. What organ must the squid’s food pass through in order for it to eat?
3. Which should you fear the most? A sand tiger fish or a miniscule dionflagellate phytoplankton?
4. Why can you see creatures that travel through the middle black layer of the ocean?

The disappearance of the Malaysian Flight 370 has taught us that there is a lot of debris in the ocean, that there are five ocean gyres in our world. This frightening news makes us aware of how important it is to start cleaning up the ocean and protect all the creatures of the ocean.

I highly recommend this book to all who care about and are interested in ocean life.

I received this book as a pick from Amazon Vine but that in no influenced my thoughts or feeling in my review.

This book does a fantastic job of opening the reader's eyes to things they never knew about the orca. Although it is a documentary-style book the author does a really good job of keeping the story going so that the book is still entertaining.

I picked up an interesting title called "Weird Sea Creatures" which was a collection of colorful and vivid photograhs of some strange and scary animals that would captivate children for hours. Many of the creatures in the book looked a lot like other name-able creatures. I myself was particularly intersted in the vivid colors that were captured in the photographs of the creatures. I've never seen most of thest creatures displayed in person, but it made me want to take a trip to the Oregon Coast Acquarium to see if i can!

This is a wide-ranging collection of short essays about insects. Quite a lot of it falls into into the type of nature writing that most bores me - trite observations all dressed up with poetic ambitions of mostly poor quality, offered by people who think staring into a garden is the same as peering into their soul. But there were a few in there that genuinely interested me, and quite a lot of them where I learned something. I was particularly enamored of the story of the pet mud dauber. So I can't entirely dislike it, though it seems most suited to people who enjoy nature writing and want a collection of very short essays to read at random intervals.

Societies are built on many things; A strong workforce, leadership, and dedication to the well-being of the society to name a few. Ant societies are no different. In fact, in many ways they do it even better than humans do.

But ants don't just build societies. They build empires. They build them with a work force of millions, who will sacrifice their lives in an instant to protect not only their queen, but a mere fellow worker. They will work ceaselessly without complaint, with no rewards other than a full stomach and the comfort and protection of the colony - their home. They don't even get to reproduce, to have offspring of their own to pass on their genes. Such things are left up to the queen, whom they worship and guard with unconditional fealty. This thriving metropolis is a superorganism, so perfectly coordinated and composed of such selfless individuals as to rival even the greatest empires in human history. These creatures are astounding.

This book; it intrigued me like few have in recent memory. I was fascinated by the aztec ants who colonize cecropia trees, claiming them as their own and viciously attacking anything that goes near them. And the fire ants who build colonies with multiple queens, and instead of breaking off to form new empires of their own when they reproduce, simply continue to build on the one they have until there is one vast, sweeping supercolony. Oh! You can't forget the army ants, like militaristic nomads, constantly on the move and voraciously consuming as they go. And don't even get me started on the honey pot ants! I had never heard of them, or knew how fascinating they are!

It's hard to judge whether it was the subject of the book that I loved so much or the author's writing. I can say that there were a couple chapters I didn't like. One discussed the evolution of ants and another kept going on about the mysterious-but-huge amount of ant species there might be in the world. Neither interested me. These chapters were early in the book too, which was very discouraging at first, but how glad I am that I pushed through them. The ants! Oh, the ants were well worth the trouble.

Regardless, I loved this book. It was such an enjoyable and curiosity-piquing read. It was also my first foray into entomology, and it most assuredly won't be my last. 4 stars!

Excellent information on cetaceans. I've had it for years and it's served me well!

Readable, interest-holding and informative, a welcome addition to the armchair mymecologists library.

Be warned, some of the images in this wonderful book about protecting whales are disturbing. It’s never easy to see photographs of beached, dead, or injured whales and yet, any book about whale conservation would be incomplete without. Fortunately, “Whale Rescue” also contains plenty of photographs celebrating the grace and mysterious beauty of these giants of the sea. Information about various species of whales and the pressures they face from boat traffic, commercial fishing, and habitat degradation are interspersed with profiles of people who study whales and work to protect them.
A section of fast facts, a list of resources for those interested in learning more or getting involved in whale preservation, and a good index make this a great tool for children doing research projects.

This is The Discovering My World series