Cetacean Census: The Orca Scientists by Kim Perez Valice

Orcas are curious about humans. Some swim over to check out orca scientist Ken Balcomb's 19-foot boat.


On occasion, he says, some whales come over to inspect him while showing off their new calves. "Obviously they can tell the sound of our boat. Even if other boats are around, they come to us as if to say, 'You're here again!'" When Ken peers down over the side, a bull (adult male) stares up at him. Often the two will lock eyes until the bull decides to swim away. There's no mistaking that curiosity is an indication of the depth of the orcas' intelligence. Science necropsies show that the the large brain of an orca contains cortical thickness, a physical trait associated with consciousness, memory, attention, language, and thought.

We humans share that curiosity, fascinated by those large-brained, socially-adapted mammals such as whales, dolphins, elephants, and the great apes, that despite our obvious physical differences, share many of our characteristics. And this is absolutely true of the striking black and white orca, the largest of the dolphins.

Kim Perez Valice's The Orca Scientists (Scientists in the Field Series) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018) portrays the curiosity we humans share about the magnificent orca and their amazing lives in the sea. Like elephants, whales, and others of the dolphin family, the orcas have a matrilineal family social order, often guided by the oldest female, (one leader is even nicknamed "Granny") who presides over the pod, several generations of children and grandchildren, passing down their particular "dialect" of verbal calls that constitutes the orcas' language and their knowledge of where to find food and safety. Child care is a specially curated skill among orcas as well. Family members help feed expectant and nursing mothers and pass down pod culture in distinct calls and a body of hunting skills to young ones.

A Chinook salmon jumps out of the water. When it plunges back, eleven-year-old J-41 (Eclipse) and her one-and-a-half-year-old son, J-51 (Nova), are now near the boat. Eclipse swims to the fish, clamps it in her jaw, and then lets it go. Nova chases the fish, clinches it, and then loses his grip. Eclipse lunges down to the back of the boat, where the salmon is hiding under the motor. With a quick pop she hits the fish with her head to stun it. Eclipse corrals the stunned salmon, moving it closer to her son, who grabs it and bites down.

Since this pod of salmon-feeding orcas have been declining in numbers and in body size, the scientists are keeping close tabs on their well-being, utilizing a wide array of equipment and techniques, from drone flights, fast cameras to capture above and below water activities and the annual mug shots used to keep count of the pods' population, blubber biopsy specimens, blood tests to measure hormones and toxic pollutants, and sonar recorders to catch the orcas' calls, as well as such low-tech means as scat-scenting detector dogs, trained dolphins who act as stand-ins for their cousins in experiments on the amount of energy required in vocalizations, and the human brains who memorize the different dorsal fin and saddle markings of each individual orca for quick identification

With vivid and detailed descriptions, author Valice and photographer Andy Comins take readers along with real orca scientists on the boats in Puget Sound in the chilly northern Pacific to observe the ebb and flow of life among these incredible animals who are so important to the ecology of the oceans of the world. With hundreds of color photos of everything--from breaching matriarchs to orca poop-scoopers--with this book in HMH's peerless Scientists in the Field series, aspiring scientists share the sights, smells, and sensations of doing animal science at very close range to their large marine subjects.

Appended are several useful sections--"How to Get Involved and Stay Involved," a glossary, a list of selected sources, bibliography, author's note, and index--to serve the needs of young research report writers.

Stayin' Alive! Camp Panda: Helping Cubs Return to the Wild by Catherine Thimmesh

Teeny-tiny panda cub Tao Tao--weigh in a approximately 4 ounces (1/900th the size of his mother)--was born in August of 2010, in a semi-wild training enclosure, delivered by his mama, Cao Cao, with no human intervention. Tao Tao was the first captive cub born naturally, just as he would have been in the wild, showcasing right from the git-go a significant change in the three-stage change training program.

Wild pandas are endangered, on the brink of extinction; in their natural range in China, only a tiny fraction of its original area remains because of encroachment of human activity which destroys their habitat. Despite their robust size, pandas don't have the resiliency of animals like raccoons, rabbits, and kangaroos, which adapt to living near humans easily. Pandas are big, required to eat eighteen hours a day to maintain their weight, but their diet is mostly limited to bamboo. Pandas reproduce infrequently, raising only one cub at a time, and cubs grow up slowly, requiring close care and teaching by their mothers for a couple of years. This lack of resiliency means that survival of their species now depends on reintroduction to the wild by cubs born in captivity, but even healthy cubs raised with the help of humans have had a hard time surviving in the wild.

"Reintroductions... are not guaranteed to work. But most of the time, the alternative of doing nothing means extinction."

But Cao Cao was lucky; he was one of the first cubs to be brought up only by his mother in a large protected area with minimal exposure to humans. For that, at Panda Camp the "counselors" get to play dress-up.

Now--as if it were Halloween or a day at a Disney theme park--the team don their panda suits whenever the enter the enclosure to deliver bamboo. Alas, they can't play with the huggable, lovable cub, not even when he becomes irresistible as he learns to run and roll about playfully. The caretakers weren't particularly comfortable in the heavy, hot panda suits. And they stank! Panda poo and pee were rubbed all over their fur so they'll smell like a panda."

With only about 1,864 pandas left in the wild, Cao Cao is an important graduate of Camp Panda. Not only is he part of the work to restore a healthy population of his species, but giant pandas themselves are an "umbrella species," one whose habitat preservation also works for other endangered animals, in the case of southeastern China, the snow leopard, the snub-nosed monkey, and the red panda.

Catherine Thimmesh's Camp Panda: Helping Cubs Return to the Wild (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018) offers students an engrossing study of how animal scientists work to save some of the planet's most important endangered species. Author Thimmesh, winner of the American Library Association's prestigious Sibert Award for informational books for young people, takes vicarious happy campers along to spend some time at Camp Panda as specialists from China and other nations work together to help preserve this signature animal, the giant panda, a worldwide symbol for the rescue of a threatened species.

Filled with charming color photos of this most appealing animal and written in an easy-going but informative style, with solid backmatter for the middle reader environmentalist--glossary, bibliography, and index--and with a useful section, "Stepping Up to Save a Species--What Can You Do?" this informal but informative book offers much for the curious animal lover and young research report writer alike.

Earth Day Alphabet Book: Gone Wild: An Endangered Animal Alphabet

Earth Day's observation of the value of the creatures who share our planet is a good occasion to give a second look at David McLiman's 2007 Caldecott Honor book Gone Wild.

This arresting book is an artistic tour de force. "This alphabet is a return to picture writing," the author/illustrator says in his introduction, and, as promised, each letter of the alphabet artfully incorporates the head or body of an endangered animal, from Chinese Alligator to Grevy's Zebra. The letters are strikingly displayed in bold, black line upon stark white pages, and the physical characteristics of the animal are dynamically captured within the curves and lines of the upper case form of the letters. The silhouette of each animal is rendered in red at the margin of the page, along with a box which details the common and scientific name, class, habitat, range, threats to the animal's survival, and status (critically endangered, endangered, or vulnerable to extinction).

Although this book is clearly not intended as a child's first alphabet book, the appeal of its sheer graphic beauty will serve to spark interest in the viability of these various animals, large and small. An appendix includes additional information about each endangered animal, a bibliography of further sources, and organizations and web sites devoted to their preservation.