Where the Wild Things Were

For much of the past weekend, the intern house was without internet. This was fine by me because I spent a lot of time curled up in bed with a cup of coffee and a good book. I just finished one of the books I got for Christmas - Where the Wild Things Were by William Stolzenburg. This is a book about the disappearance of large predators around the world and the impacts of their absence. It looks at many of the major papers in Ecology and breaks them down into simple terms.


The book starts with Paine's essay about a predatory starfish and tide pools along the Western coast of North America. When all the starfish were removed from a tide pool for several months in a row, the diversity of life within that tide pool plummeted. From there, the book moved on to larger oceanic predators including the killer whale. The killer whale is made to eat large meat. If you compare the jaws of the orca to that of t-rex, they look almost identical. A single killer whale has to eat 5% of its body mass a day which can amount to 600 pounds! These whales are like the wolves of sea, hunting in pods and capable of taking down a blue whale.

The charismatic large predators like the wolf and African lion were also talked about. What struck me was the fact that in much of the world today, the megafauna are missing. In their absence, small and medium sized animals like the deer, domestic cat, raccoon, and coyote have taken over. Deer are now in such high densities that some forests have been browsed beyond recognition. Domestic cats alone kill over 1 billion small critters a year and are the prime suspect in the extinction of 33 species. As recent as the early 1900's these medium sized pests would have been kept in check by the large predators now missing. The return of wolves to Yellowstone has shown that when apex predators are present, the ecosystem is healthier and has higher diversity.

The books ends talking about the greatest predator ever to walk this planet - humans. For all our good intentions, we have developed technology that allows us to change our surroundings faster than any species that came before us. Its interesting to think that while trying to make the world safer for ourselves, we may be causing more problems. Overall, I enjoyed this book - it was easy to read, made me think and I learned a few fun facts along the way!