How much does a blue whale weigh? How big is big? Using visually dazzling equivalents, How Many Elephants in a Blue Whale makes concepts like size, speed, and mass easy to grasp, and fun as well. Get the scoop on how many Eiffel Towers it takes to reach the top of Mount Everest and how fast a cheetah would have to run to outpace a Ferrarri. An irresistibly entertaining way to get a fix on how things in our world are related, this compendium is perfect for trivia lovers and those fascinated by popular science.
The blue whale is the biggest creature on Earth. But a hollow Mount Everest could hold billions of whales! And though Mount Everest is enormous, it is pretty small compared to the Earth. This book is an innovative exploration of size and proportion.
How big is big? Did you know that a blue whale's tongue weights the same as a single African elephant and that an entire whale weights the equivalent of 25 elephants? Or that a volcano can unleash the energy of 100 hydrogen bombs. Or that that 76 trombones make the same noise as a thunderclap? Journalists have long recognized that it's possible to grasp the magnitude of big things by describing them through visual equivalents or analogies, which is why they describe rainforest, for instance, as being destroyed in areas the size of Wyoming or Wales. In this fascinating and fun reference, you will discover how many times higher than Monsieur Eiffel is the Eiffel Tower, and how many Eiffel Towers there are in a Mount Everest, how many grandfathers take you back to the Jurassic period, and much much more!
A young reader’s adaptation of The New York Times bestseller Follow researcher Carl Safina as he treks with a herd of elephants across the Kenyan landscape, then travel with him to the Pacific Northwest to track and monitor whales in their ocean home. Along the way, find out more about the interior lives of these giants of land and sea—how they play, how they fight, and how they communicate with one another, and sometimes with us, too. Weaving decades of field research with exciting new discoveries about the brain and featuring astonishing photographs taken by the author, Beyond Words: What Elephants and Whales Think and Feel gives readers an intimate and extraordinary look at what makes these animals different from us, but more important, what makes us all similar.
Animals big and small introduce pre-schoolers to basic math concepts. With the help of the colorful animals in this book, even the youngest child will be able to grasp the idea of ratio and relative size. The opening illustration shows an elephant, followed by a simple phrase "1 polar bear is smaller than an elephant." An illustration of an elephant , rather than the word, challenges young children to recall the name of the animal. Then, on the facing page, an illustration shows how many polar bears would make up one elephant. It's seven! Subsequent spreads build on this concept--turn the page and readers will discover how many lions make a polar bear, and so on. The animals become progressively smaller, until the last comparison between a lemur and flea. But the book doesn't end there. Children learn that there is one animal that is bigger than them all: a whale, and that it takes all the animals in the book to make just one. Preschoolers will enjoy this fresh approach that teaches them the names of animals as well as the concept of relative size.
An ode to marine life and the natural world, from the New York Times–bestselling author of The Hidden Life of Owls This “intimate and spirited” essay collection “offers us the whale watch most of us can only dream of” as they reveal the elusive lives of whales in the Pacific Ocean—home to orcas, humpbacks, blue, gray, and sperm whales (Sy Montgomery, author of The Soul of an Octopus). Leigh Calvez has spent a dozen years researching, observing, and probing the lives of the giants of the deep. Here, she relates the stories of nature's most remarkable creatures, including the familial orcas in the waters of Washington State and British Columbia; the migratory humpbacks; the ancient, deep-diving blue whales, the largest animals on the planet. The lives of these whales are conveyed through the work of dedicated researchers who have spent decades tracking them along their secretive routes that extend for thousands of miles, gleaning their habits and sounds and distinguishing peculiarities. Calvez author invites the reader onto a small research catamaran maneuvering among 100-foot long blue whales off the coast of California; or to join the task of monitoring patterns of humpback whale movements at the ocean surface: tail throw, flipper slap, fluke up, or blow. To experience whales is breathtaking. To understand their lives deepens our connection with the natural world.
From Africa to Asia, the elephant makes its home. Light on their feet, despite their great weight, these magnificent creatures appear light and graceful because they're always walking on their tip-toes. They have excellent hearing and can detect the rumblings of other elephants from six miles away. And, just like humans being right handed or left handed, elephants can be right tusked or left tusked!
