Animal Diaspora

A breathtaking journey into the deep history of animal migration and the lessons it holds for life on a rapidly warming planet

In 2020, Inuit hunters of Canada’s Central Arctic made an intriguing discovery. They came across the massive frozen carcasses of eleven beached bowhead whales, killed by a new kind of predator. But the new arrival—a distinct type of orca migrating into the Arctic, capitalizing on the retreating sea ice—wasn’t new at all. The orcas hunted these same frigid waters at the end of the last Ice Age.

In Animal Diaspora, science writer and adventure traveler Edward Struzik reveals how the migrations and mass extinctions of the remote past shed light on the planetwide displacement of animals we are witnessing today—and may help scientists stave off the mass extinction to come. Animals from around the world were on the move during the last Ice Age, seeking refuge from ice sheets that spread across most of the northern hemisphere. But the disappearance of nearly two-thirds of the Earth’s large animals—from mammoths and mastodons to the saber-toothed cats and giant short-faced bears that hunted them—occurred during the wild swings of rapid warming and short-term cooling that followed the end of the last Ice Age. Now, as the world heats up just as fast, animals are again migrating in alarming numbers, this time due to widespread permafrost thaw, drought, wildfires, warming oceans, rising sea levels, and flooding, and exploiting new territories that were once uninhabitable.

Animal Diaspora provides vital perspective on this massive redistribution of animal life happening around the globe, blending vivid storytelling with the latest science and urging us to recognize the stunning complexity and dire implications of one of nature’s greatest spectacles.