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The Delightful “Where’s Walrus?”

You may have heard of or seen this book, since it’s been plugged quite a bit online. Allow me to introduce you to “Where’s Walrus?” a delightful picture-only book by Stephen Savage. In this brightly-colored book, a walrus escapes from a City zoo to experience life in the big city – he eludes the zookeeper by donning various disguises and hats and inserting himself into scenes you may find familiar – including a subtle shout-out to Edward Hopper which I assume is intentional. I won’t tell you how Walrus’s adventure ends except to say that he returns to the zoo, triumphant! Mr. Savage’s illustrations are fun and simplistic in the best possible way – with bright colors and simple shapes that almost make the book feel like it could have been created with cut paper or on one of those felt boards. It’s a great style and perfect for this short, wordless adventure. This is one of those great books that a small child will pick up over and over and find new things in the illustrations each time. This book deserves all the accolades that it’s been getting.

EDIT: And yes, I bought the book at full price! Proof is above. This ain’t no payola-driven walrus blog!

The Author, Stephen Savage, follows us on Twitter (@walrusweb) – you can check him out on Twitter here @savageartist. A promotional “trailer” made the rounds on the Web when the book was released – it’s worth watching, so check it out right here!

I love this book. I grew up in New Jersey, and since my Dad was a student and later a professor at Columbia University we spent a great deal of time in the City. Of the things that I still strongly associate with New York City, the books of Ezra Jack Keats, particularly “Hi, Cat!” “Where’s Walrus?” reminds me of this book.

Pick up a copy of this delightful book for the small child in your life. They will love it. Here’s the link on Amazon, and for good measure – here’s a link to The Cat as well.

Buy Where’s Walrus? on Amazon.com
Buy Hi, Cat (Picture Books) on Amazon.com

Great painting of a walrus being created – check this video out!

I got an email today from a guy asking me to check out this video of his brother’s walrus art, ’cause he thought it would go great on the blog. OK, I’ll check it out… And he was right. Thanks for the tip! Great painting and amazing process. Seriously, stay with this video ’til the end because you’ll be amazed. I guarantee you’ll be saying to yourself, OK – where’s the walrus? But just wait….

Nice work!

Another Great Walrus Photo from National Geographic Prints Store

(C) Pete Barrett, National Geographic Image Collection

Check out this great photo available from the National Geographic Prints Store. I have another walrus print from this store hanging on my office wall, but I may have to order this one too. Prints from the store range in price from $24.95 up to a 50″ print for $199. Think my girlfriend will let me get THAT one into the house? Yeah, me neither.

Here’s the link to this photo. Such a thoughtful walrus, and a great photo – please support this photographer by buying a print, if you feel like your home or office needs a little extra walrus!

http://gallery.pictopia.com/natgeo/photo/9448943/

Wipeout Canada: The Walrus Connection!

One of my Twitter followers, friend of the blog @Walruswhisperer (Phil Demers) WON the first running of the course on the Canadian version of Wipeout which aired in Canada last night! Big bucks and serious bragging rights!

Here’s where this post is going to get kind of long… First of all, Phil had contacted me on Twitter (@walrusweb) to make me aware of his incredible walrus story (details below and in a future post), so I was extra-amused when he tweeted that he’d be on Wipeout – since aside from Walruses, Wipeout is one of my favorite things-that-no-one-understands-my-love-of. I can NOT get enough of people doing amazing faceplants and flying through the air while trying to get through that course. Don’t get me started.

This is not the only time in my recent life that walruses and Wipeout have come together. Since it’s my blog, I’ll tell this brief story. But first I have to make a confession. I’m a TV talker. I cannot watch a TV show such as Wipeout without talking to the screen, or in the case of Wipeout, loudly saying “OOOOF!” or “Right in the FACE!” while watching the show. I can’t help it, it’s reflex. I am the laughing stock of the house, and certain of the family will not watch TV with me because of this. So anyway, my girlfriend and I recently got involved in a contest (as in the Seinfeld episode, but not related to, well… you know) with the various kids of the house. The contest went like this: each person would have one thing selected for them that they would have to give up. Things like Justin Beiber, texting, or talking during TV shows. All the kids assumed I’d be the first one out, and they came up with a plan to break me immediately. Yes – I got home to find YouTube via the PS3 hooked up to the big TV with Wipeout’s funniest wipeouts and other clips cued up. They though they had me, but I was strong. I managed to watch several clips without uttering an OOF or so much as an “oh MAN!” when someone got clocked in the FACE by that one obstacle, or flew off of the red balls flailing into the water… I was cold as ice. Nothing. I had won. Then I mentioned that there was this one walrus video they should check out and we ended up watch random Youtube walrus videos. There was with one video where this guy was talking about the HUGE walrus! Wow! Look at that WALRUS! and I immediately broke down. “That’s a sea lion you idiot!” I yelled at the screen. And just like that I was out. Like Phil – I had survived Wipeout, only to be brought down by some hodad who doesn’t know his pinnipeds.

Congrats Phil! Especially if you held on long enough to read this entire post!

Here’s a link to the brief piece about Phil’s win in the Niagra Falls Review.

Here’s Phil’s Wipeout audition tape from YouTube:

Here’s a link to Wipeout Canada’s website, but be warned – I don’t think anyone outside Canada can see this video. I can’t anyway – I’ve tried on a few browsers, so I suspect it’s Canada only..

I will be posting more about Phil shortly – if you think his story sounds familiar, it’s likely you’ve heard of his unusual relationship with Smooshi the Walrus! If you haven’t – watch this next vid and prepare to be amazed.

All the Walruses that are fit to print

This doesn’t count as a “real” post – but I just did a search for “Walrus” on www.nytimes.com, just out of curiosity, and got this great results page.

See the results yourself, at this link to the search…

Lots of good reading here, and some post material as well, I’m sure. As some of you may know, it was an article in the New York Times that essentially inspired me to create this site. I posted about that one, here.

Walruses just aren’t meant to drive 200 MPH.

(Juan Pablo Montoya on Williams-BMW, United States GP 2004, by Rick Dikeman Fron English Wikipedia)

The (McLaren F1) team began the season with a radical nose-cone design, known as the “Walrus-Nose”, that proved uncompetitive and was replaced by a more conventional assembly in the second half of the year. (from full Williams F1 article @ wikipedia)

This post is thanks to news today that Williams Grand Prix Engineering Limited (WilliamsF1) is redeveloping the “Walrus nose” design for their formula 1 racecars  to generate more downforce, especially in urban settings and better absorb the turbulence associated with the high speeds of Formula 1 racing.

Didn’t expect to post about THAT today!

Monthly Meta: Facts about the blog

Happy February regular readers, and welcome new visitors! I’m just marking a spot here for the monthly “meta” post. For those of you that aren’t nerds, “meta” is a term used by those of us who spend WAY too much time online, to refer to data associated with a thing. I use the tag “Meta” to describe posts that aren’t about walruses, but are about the blog. I only do one meta post a month, maximum, unless something unusual happens.

January was our busiest month so far on the blog – we’ve been doing a little advertising, and it’s driven SOME traffic to the site, but the vast majority comes from Google. As you may know, we’re on Twitter and twitter is now our number 2 referrer (only 7%, versus 64% for Google – so a distant second). Are you following us on Twitter? We post about new blog posts and also retweet interesting walrus stuff and respond at random to tweets mentioning walruses.

Chumley the Walrus still rules the search terms with an iron flipper. 12 of the top twenty search terms people use to find the blog involve Chumley.

We’ve got some fun stuff coming up this month. I have a lot in my drafts folder – if I wasn’t so busy with my actual JOB, I’d be able to post more often. Please pass the word about the World Wide Walrus Web to your friends online via Twitter or your own blogs, as always – thanks for your visits and comments and feel free to help us out by clicking on an ad link now and then – this isn’t our job, but hosting isn’t free…

Bluey The Walrus

This is “Bluey The Walrus” who is a boss-level character in the video game “Diddy Kong Racing”. H’es found in the”Snowflake Mountain” area of the game. Apparently he’s pretty hard to beat, at least is the Nintendo DS version of the game.

Here’s the wiki entry about Bluey over at Super Mario Wiki.

I’ve done a fair amount of research towards cartoon walrus characters, and have been noticing the frequent use of the walrus as a video game character – I sense a new category of posts. In fact, I’ve just added a category for video games to the blog’s category list. We’ll see what else I can find. As for Bluey, I’ll put my son, a voracious player of all DS games, on the case and we’ll see if we can get some hands-on Bluey racing experience.

WOW, a walrus . . . get it?


I don’t play World of Warcraft (OK, I played Guild Wars for several years) – but if I did, I’d be this guy.

Worldwide Walrus Population

I noticed in my site logs that someone came to the site today off of the Google Query “How many Pacific Walruses are there in the world?” A good question – so I Googled it myself, and I’ll add the info to the site now, thanks to the excellent “Walrus Info Book” on Seaworld.org (Link to HTML, Link to PDF).

  1. Total world walrus population is about 250,000 animals.
  2. The Pacific walrus population is currently unknown but was last estimated at more than 200,000 animals in 1990.
    • The Pacific walrus population has been hunted to depletion and allowed to recover several times.
    • After the latest population depletion, which began in the 1930s, Pacific walruses were given protection by Russia, the State of Alaska, and the U.S. federal government. This protection led to the eventual recovery of the Pacific walrus population. Walruses reoccupied areas where they had not been seen for several years.
    • By the early 1980s, walruses appeared leaner. They increased their consumption of alternate foods such as fishes. Natural mortality increased, and birth rates decreased. This evidence supports the theory that the Pacific walrus population may have approached the carrying capacity of its environment.
    • As the Pacific walrus population grew, annual subsistence catches by indigenous Arctic peoples ranged from about 3,000 to 16,000 walruses per year until about 1990, and then decreased to an average of 5,789 animals per year from 1996 to 2000. Some scientists predict that, without long-term management, natural and human-related mortality factors could rapidly reduce the population once more.
    • Currently the US Geological Survey (USGS) and the Russian Knipovich Polar Research Institute are jointly undertaking a walrus population study. Using infrared imaging they locate walrus groups hauled out on sea ice. High resolution digital photography allows researchers to estimate group numbers. They also use satellite telemetry to estimate the percentage of the population visible during counts

So now we’ve got the info as well! Although I notice that this info refers to 1990 counts, and one must assume that there have been wide variations in population since then. Very likely an overall reduction I’m afraid. EDIT 4/7/2011: Looks like the revised numbers have the current Pacific Walrus numbers at only 180,000 animals. When I find the official update report, I will repost the correct and latest numbers.