Hi all.
I don’t have a background in biology, I’m looking for resources—books, courses, or any other materials—that are scientifically accurate and in-depth, yet still accessible to someone without specialized knowledge. I’m interested in learning more about whale biology, behavior, and ecology.
Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated!
Comments
Look into MOOCs (massive open online courses) in the topic
I’d start by looking for scientific papers on the things you’re interested in. If you’re a student or live near a university, the reference library and reference librarians can be great. If you don’t have access to a reference library, a regular librarian should be able to help as well, but reference librarians live this stuff.
Trying to read those papers is likely to be a struggle, as they’re going to assume knowledge that you likely don’t possess. Take a look at MIT Open courseware and other online series to catch up on the things that you don’t understand.
You can pick up a bit of trivia, but it’ll be next to impossible to get a decent understanding of any subject without understanding the foundations. You can pick up bits and pieces, can learn what is going on, but will have a hard time understanding the why or how of the subject.
You need to be a well accomplished diver to study them in depth, but you can also study them on the surface of water or on land with a book 🙂
I’ll just show myself out.
I’d start with one of those illustrated guide books you’d get in HS libraries and work from there. You’ll get a superficial idea of cetaceans as a whole, then see what you’re actually interested in and you can look for more information about that.
I’d get some nonfiction books written by researchers that give a deeper understanding of what is known. It’s a more indepth text but in an easy to read informal language, instead of the info dump of textbooks. If you’re interested in a specific topic, an actual paper is the best.