Spying on Whales
The Past, Present, and Future of Earth's Most Awesome Creatures
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Narrated by:
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Nick Pyenson
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By:
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Nick Pyenson
About this listen
“A palaeontological howdunnit...[Spying on Whales] captures the excitement of...seeking answers to deep questions in cetacean science.” (Nature)
Called “the best of science writing” (Edward O. Wilson) and named a best book by Popular Science, a dive into the secret lives of whales, from their four-legged past to their perilous present. Whales are among the largest, most intelligent, deepest diving species to have ever lived on our planet. They evolved from land-roaming, dog-size creatures into animals that move like fish, breathe like us, can grow to 300,000 pounds, live 200 years, and travel entire ocean basins.
Whales fill us with terror, awe, and affection - yet there is still so much we don't know about them. Why did it take whales over 50 million years to evolve to such big sizes, and how do they eat enough to stay that big? How did their ancestors return from land to the sea - and what can their lives tell us about evolution as a whole? Importantly, in the sweepstakes of human-driven habitat and climate change, will whales survive?
Nick Pyenson's research has given us the answers to some of our biggest questions about whales. He takes us deep inside the Smithsonian's unparalleled fossil collections, to frigid Antarctic waters, and to the arid desert in Chile, where scientists race against time to document the largest fossil whale site ever found. Full of rich storytelling and scientific discovery, Spying on Whales spans the ancient past to an uncertain future - all to better understand the most enigmatic creatures on Earth.
©2018 Nick Pyenson (P)2018 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“A palaeontological howdunnit embedded in a travelogue devoted to chasing living and extinct whales...[Spying on Whales] captures the excitement of suction-cup tagging of humpback whales, and of digs in Panama, seeking answers to deep questions in cetacean science.” (Nature)
“Spying on Whales represents the best of science writing. The subject is inherently fascinating, the author is an authentic scientist by virtue of his personal research on the subject, and the text reads like the epic it truly is.” (Edward O. Wilson, Pulitzer Prize-winner and New York Times best-selling author of The Origin of Creativity and The Meaning of Human Existence)
"Pyenson sheds light on the mystery of life below the seas without dimming its majesty.” (Library Journal, starred)
"Contagiously enthusiastic.... A fascinating and entertaining look at whales and the scientists who study them." (Publishers Weekly)
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How to laugh while learning/ learn while laughing
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By: Marah J. Hardt
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The Galápagos
- A Natural History
- By: Henry Nicholls
- Narrated by: James Adams
- Length: 5 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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The Galapagos were once known to the sailors and pirates who encountered them as Las Encantadas: the enchanted islands, home to exotic creatures and dramatic volcanic scenery. In The Galapagos, science writer Henry Nicholls offers a lively natural and human history of the archipelago, charting its evolution from deserted wilderness to scientific resource (made famous by Charles Darwin) and global ecotourism hot spot.
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Thought-Provoking
- By Jean on 10-23-18
By: Henry Nicholls
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The Sediments of Time
- My Lifelong Search for the Past
- By: Meave Leakey, Samira Leakey
- Narrated by: Susan Lyons
- Length: 14 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Preeminent paleoanthropologist Meave Leakey brings us along on her remarkable journey to reveal the diversity of our early pre-human ancestors and how past climate change drove their evolution. She offers a fresh account of our past, as recent breakthroughs have allowed new analysis of her team’s fossil findings and vastly expanded our understanding of our ancestors. Meave’s own personal story is replete with drama, from thrilling discoveries on the shores of Lake Turkana to run-ins with armed herders and every manner of wildlife, to raising her children....
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Brilliant!
- By tess koffler on 04-07-21
By: Meave Leakey, and others
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Feathers
- The Evolution of a Natural Miracle
- By: Thor Hanson
- Narrated by: Andy Ingalls
- Length: 8 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Feathers are an evolutionary marvel: Aerodynamic, insulating, beguiling. They date back more than 100 million years. Yet their story has never been fully told. In Feathers, biologist Thor Hanson details a sweeping natural history, as feathers have been used to fly, protect, attract, and adorn through time and place. Applying the research of paleontologists, ornithologists, biologists, engineers, and even art historians, Hanson asks: What are feathers? How did they evolve? What do they mean to us?
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Fantastic Science and Fun
- By Chris Reich on 12-28-14
By: Thor Hanson
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The Tyrannosaur Chronicles
- By: David Hone
- Narrated by: Gavin Osborn
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Adored by children and adults alike, tyrannosaurus is the most famous dinosaur in the world, one that pops up again and again in pop culture, often battling other beasts such as King Kong, triceratops, or velociraptors in Jurassic Park. But despite the hype, tyrannosaurus and the other tyrannosaurs are fascinating animals in their own right and are among the best-studied of all dinosaurs.
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An Engaging Biography of the King
- By Erik on 08-06-18
By: David Hone
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First Peoples in a New World
- Colonizing Ice Age America
- By: David J. Meltzer
- Narrated by: Christopher Prince
- Length: 11 hrs
- Abridged
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More than 12,000 years ago, in one of the greatest triumphs of prehistory, humans colonized North America, a continent that was then truly a new world. Just when and how they did so has been one of the most perplexing and controversial questions in archaeology.
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Last Gasp of American Anthropological Orthodoxy
- By Thomas66 on 01-05-17
By: David J. Meltzer
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Remarkable Creatures
- Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species
- By: Sean B. Carroll
- Narrated by: Jim Bond
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Just 150 years ago, most of our world was an unexplored wilderness. Our sense of its age was vastly off the mark. And what we believed to be the history of our own species consisted of fantastic myths and fairy tales; fossils, known for millennia, were seen as the bones of dragons and other imagined creatures. How did we learn so much so quickly? Remarkable Creatures celebrates the pioneers who replaced our fancies with the even more remarkable real story of how our world evolved.
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A Remarkable Journey
- By Michael Dowd on 03-22-09
By: Sean B. Carroll
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How to Build a Dinosaur
- Extinction Doesn't Have to Be Forever
- By: Jack Horner, James Gorman
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 6 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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In movies, in novels, in comic strips, and on television, we've all seen dinosaurs - or at least somebody's educated guess of what they would look like. But what if it were possible to build, or grow, a real dinosaur without finding ancient DNA? Jack Horner, the scientist who advised Steven Spielberg on the blockbuster film Jurassic Park and a pioneer in bringing paleontology into the 21st century, teams up with the editor of the New York Times's Science Times section to reveal exactly what's in store.
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Good book but misplaced title
- By Robert on 06-19-15
By: Jack Horner, and others
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The Ocean of Life
- The Fate of Man and the Sea
- By: Callum Roberts
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 13 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Who can forget the sense of wonder with which they discovered the creatures of the deep? In this vibrant hymn to the sea, Callum Roberts - one of the world’s foremost conservation biologists - leads listeners on a fascinating tour of mankind’s relationship to the sea, from the earliest traces of water on Earth to the oceans as we know them today. In the process, Roberts looks at how the taming of the oceans has shaped human civilization and affected marine life. Like Four Fish and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, The Ocean of Life takes a long view to tell a story in which each one of us has a role to play.
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MUST READ!
- By E on 11-28-17
By: Callum Roberts
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Atlas of a Lost World
- By: Craig Childs
- Narrated by: Craig Childs
- Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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From the author of Apocalyptic Planet, an unsparing, vivid, revelatory travelogue through prehistory that traces the arrival of the First People in North America 20,000 years ago and the artifacts that enable us to imagine their lives and fates. This book upends our notions of where these people came from and who they were.
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Blaaaa
- By Josh NJ on 07-26-18
By: Craig Childs
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The Beak of the Finch
- A Story of Evolution in Our Time
- By: Jonathan Weiner
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Rosemary and Peter Grant and those assisting them have spend 20 years on Daphne Major, an island in the Galapagos, studying natural selection. They recognize each individual bird on the island, when there are 400 at the time of the author's visit or when there are over a thousand. They have observed about 20 generations of finches - continuously.Jonathan Weiner follows these scientists as they watch Darwin's finches and come up with a new understanding of life itself.
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Fascinating in-depth look at evolution in action
- By Philip on 05-15-11
By: Jonathan Weiner
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The Ancestor's Tale
- A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution
- By: Richard Dawkins
- Narrated by: Richard Dawkins, Lalla Ward
- Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins
- Abridged
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In The Ancestor's Tale, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins offers a masterwork: an exhilarating reverse tour through evolution, from present-day humans back to the microbial beginnings of life four billion years ago. Throughout the journey, Dawkins spins entertaining, insightful stories and sheds light on topics such as speciation, sexual selection, and extinction. The Ancestor's Tale is at once an essential education in evolutionary theory and riveting in its telling.
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Please do an unabridged version!
- By MovieExpertise on 09-29-16
By: Richard Dawkins
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Almost Human
- The Astonishing Tale of Homo Naledi and the Discovery That Changed Our Human Story
- By: Lee Berger, John Hawks
- Narrated by: Donald Corren
- Length: 6 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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A story of defiance and determination by a controversial scientist, this is Lee Berger's own take on finding Homo naledi, an all-new species on the human family tree and one of the greatest discoveries of the 21st century. In 2013, Lee Berger, a National Geographic explorer-in-residence, heard of a cache of bones in a hard-to-reach underground cave in South Africa. He put out a call around the world for petite collaborators - men and women small and adventurous enough to be able to squeeze through eight-inch tunnels to reach a sunless cave forty feet underground. It worked.
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A deep story on the rocky trail to human origins
- By Peter Matthews on 01-14-19
By: Lee Berger, and others
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What listeners say about Spying on Whales
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- JQ
- 10-17-23
Fabulous
Informative & fun to listen to! So many interesting facts! Definitely recommend this book to ocean & animal lovers.
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- Amazon Customer
- 01-06-19
Beautiful, fascinating and interesting.
This is a beautiful account of whales. It was truly inspiring, and did not disappoint me. There were so many interesting facts and it provided an insight into the field of our biggest mammal ever.
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- Melissa
- 01-21-19
A side of cetaceans you don’t think about every day!
Great combination of marine biology and paleontology. I’m glad I listened to this title since it is read by the author.
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- Js
- 11-29-18
Was hoping for more history
Very glossed over history of industrial whaling. A nice glance into the past present and future of whales but not very deep.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Hayley
- 07-31-23
Interesting
Interesting information but the writing is not particularly riveting. This book is more about the prehistoric development of whales and what we learn from whale fossils than about modern whales. Worth a read, but not worth reading twice.
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- Didem G.
- 06-16-19
Didem
I have an incredible love to whales. While I see how important his research and efforts are. I have been tortured emotionally on some part of the book. I have so much mixed feelings towards research on a whaling ships. Yes, thanks to him we understand some physical attributes of whales better and yes whaling was not his decision. Still, I do not need to approve it. I have learned a few new things about whales without no so much their behaviors, emotions, communication skills etc. jaw bones were not my real interest really.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Jef Szi
- 11-30-22
Moving narrative with nerdy detail
i love whales, so this book suits my inclination
It fostered the depths of my understanding and my connection to how much magnificence there is as well as fragility for whales. It’s also a very good testimony about how science works and can work to help us understand the world we share with cetaceans💕🐋
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1 person found this helpful
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- Birgit
- 08-14-18
Feeling clarity and intrigued by cetacean science
Definitely for all of us effected by our world of water and species we love.
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- Kindle Customer
- 10-12-18
A Whale of a Story About Whales
Whales are huge and they are cool!
But what else to we really know about them. Dr. Pyenson's book tells us that whales have been studied extensively and a lot is known about them. But, for every fact uncovered there seems to be 10 or more questions that arise that require further research.
Dr. Pyenson obviously is fascinated with whales and has the skill to explain them to just about anyone. This book has been written to be understood by laymen. If you like whales, you should read/listen to this book as you will probably find it just as fascinating as I did.
A couple of parts that I found particularly interesting are:
The research that took place to determine whether a baleen whale controls the flow of water into its throat when feeding or is the throat expanded due to shear volume without any control of the water by the whale. Doesn't sound to significant until you realize that the amount of water taken in during each jaw opening is the equivalent volume of a nominal living room in a house and that from opening to closing of the jaw takes place in less than 15 seconds. Amazing! Btw, the research calculated that the whale must control the flow as the forces are so significant that if they didn't control it the back of their throat would blow out.
The second item was about a whale graveyard found in South America. Just before reading "Spying on Whales", I had finished "This Is Your Brain on Parasites", which identifies just how much impact micro-organisms can have in our world in the past, presently and in the future. Regarding the whale graveyard, this impact was in the past.
The whale graveyard is unique in that there are several layers of whale fossils/bones in this graveyard. Each event that caused the whales to die (referred to as a whale fall) are thousands of years apart. The quality and quantity of the whale remains indicates that the cause of death was quite rapid. The theory is that the weather pattern had changed and caused substantial rain in the mountains which caused a micro-organism that inhabited the mountains to be washed out to the ocean shore. Much like a red tide is today, the micro-organism quantity proved to be substantial enough to cause the water that the whales were swimming in to become toxic. It is amazing that one of the smallest living organisms can kill one of the largest living creatures on the planet.
There are plenty of other things to learn about whales in this book. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and highly recommend it to anyone who has an interest in whales. I listened to the audio version and recommend it to those that like listening to a very good story.
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2 people found this helpful
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- AK
- 06-02-24
Interesting & Thoughtful
The audio of this book by the author was very slow, but listening at 1.7 speed helped me hear his passion and interest in the topic. I’ve always been fascinated by whales, and learned a lot of historical information I didn’t know before. Also interesting is how whaling has not only impacted whale populations; it has also impacted other parts of the ocean ecosystem. After listening, I’m still wowed by blue whales, and sadly am less “warm & fuzzy” about orcas. It’s also good to know that whale fecal matter has its necessary place in our world!
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