Narwhals: Arctic Whales in a Melting World (Samuel and Althea Stroum Books xx)

Great book to learn more about these wonderful animals and their home in the arctic waters.

I've always been fascinated by narwhals and other Arctic wildlife and was excited to see this book come out. I was not disappointed. This is a wonderfully written book that deftly weaves together what is known about the natural history of this awesome creature , the author's personal experiences, and the possible impacts of global upon the denizens of the Arctic.

If it weren't for the four other books I was reading at the same time that were actually interesting (a couple on dolphins, one on belugas, and another on why pluto wasn't a planet anymore by mike brown, which I loved) I probably wouldn't have finished this book. It has some interesting stuff on narwhals interspersed between his way-too-detailed accounts of the trips he took to see narwhals and his boring conversations with experts on ice cores (so fascinating) and other stuff related to narwhals. He also randomly talked about walruses. I thought he would tie this into narwhal tusks somehow but he didn't. He filled some pages with all the birds he saw too. I'm surprised there wasn't a chapter on what he did at all the airports he must have visited. What's his favorite color? Does he like cucumbers? (I don't) I honestly don't think there was enough subject matter to write this book. I thought it would be like Nancy Lord's Beluga Days, which is a similar concept (she travels to see belugas and talk with other people who like belugas and throws in interesting facts about belugas here and there), but it wasn't. It appeared to be a lame attempt to create a book like hers but about narwhals. It is unfortunately the only book out there about narwhals (well, at least on Amazon). If you see it at the library and have no other options or have some money to blow and need time to kill go for it I guess.

Such an unusual creature, which was fascinating to read about!!!

Todd McLeish gives us a great introduction to a striking animal. While most everyone knows about narwhals, all we remember it for is the tusk. As striking as that tusk or horn is (it's a giant tooth, essentially, but one that grows in a unique spiral pattern), there's a lot more to the animal than that.The author recounts his travels to see narwhals in North America, Greenland, and Iceland. He speaks with biologists, indigenous hunters, and various other folks. Narwhal hunting is legal, though regulated, and the tusks are still prized worldwide by collectors of natural history items. (The tusks cannot be imported legally into the U.S., though a Canadian dealer told the author it could be arranged.) Narwhals are still important sources of meat and muktuk and other useful items in the far North. McLeish attends hunts and, while a confirmed animal lover, is not opposed to controlled hunting in communities where the animal is an important food source and the entire carcass is put to use.The males, we learn, do not use their seven-foot tusks to joust or for defense. They do have an odd habit of raising their tusks into the air in pairs or groups, like knights hoisting their lances after a tournament, and sometimes touching them together. (About one half of one percent of narwhals have two tusks, and occasional tusked females are reported.) McLeish also reports on the controversy about what the tusk is for. It's not for grubbing up food or for breaking through ice. Most cetologists regard it as strictly a sexual display item, like antlers, but a few researchers point to what appear to be nerve channels (this tooth is, compared to your teeth, essentially inside out) and think it has important functions as a sensor probe, testing water temperature and salinity in ways that might help males find females.Narwhals are not endangered, with a population of 80,000 or so, but they face unknown effects from climate change and the accumulation of PCBs and other toxins. They are, McLeish argues convincingly, worth protecting as a part of the Arctic ecosystem and as a species admirably adapted to harsh conditions where even other whales are rare.There are a couple of subjects I hoped the author would touch on to make this a more comprehensive book on the species. One is the hybridization of narwhals and belugas, which is rare but a confirmed fact. The other is the strange reports of narwhals or something like them from the opposite end of the Earth: a southern narwhal, while reported only a couple of times, is still an interesting topic.Despite these small omissions, this is a terrific book. I read it through at one sitting, and and I now know a lot more about these unique cetaceans and their world.Matt BilleAuthor, Shadows of Existence: Discoveries and Speculations in Zoology (Hancock House, 2006)[...]

There isn't much on narwhals, so I had high hopes this would be the definitive book. It isn't, but I found lots of interesting detail I had not previously known.The author visited a number of places to talk with experts, native people and others knowledgeable about the animals. He overdoes the interviews and travel details, I think, and I found it got in the way of the narrative flow. This does give a sort of legitimacy to the book, but could have been written about with a lighter hand.Of the places he visited, narwhals seem in best shape in Greenland, but the whales are under pressure there as everywhere else they are found. He writes that the villages don't like to talk about it, but younger hunters sometimes kill narwhals just for the tusk, and at $150 per foot one can see the rationale. The undercurrent in the book is that the future for narwhals is not good.I had not known the animals can dive so deep. Or live so long. One survey he cites, using eye lenses of narwhals (and therefore the whole animal harvested for use) can give an age for them. The survey showed that 20% of the sample were over fifty and one had lived for about 115 years.

This book read more like a travelogue than an in depth look at these amazing creatures, and depending on what you're looking for this might be the book for you. I was hoping for a little more facts and less of the author's whining about the weather conditions and lack of respect for Inuit people's cultural traditions. However, the book shines a light on the true issue here and that is that there truly is not enough research done on narwhals to warrant a whole 200 page book. I found the facts and the studies he talked about interesting, but I feel that more research needs to be done on these fascinating creatures so we can give them the good, thorough book they deserve.