There are many terrifying things that can happen out at sea, and one of them is being chomped on by a whale.
While there’s a low chance of being swallowed up by Shamu, nothing is impossible.
There have been varying stories about people being swallowed, hunted or even saved by the Shamu’s and Moby Dicks of the world, and sperm whales are just as likely to accidentally get a little too close for comfort too.
Whales (with the exception of toothed wales like orcas, beluga and sperm whales) feast on small fish and plankton, donning an enormous number of fibrous 'baleen' plates in their mouths instead of teeth to filter out the krill from larger objects and deposit the water back into the sea.
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But there have been cases of humans being unfortunate enough to bypass this system entirely and get caught up in their chompers.
One famous case is of Michael Packard.
In 2021, Packard was out swimming on the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, US, with another dive crew member as they headed down towards the sea bed to hunt lobsters.
That’s when he got gulped up by what he thought was a great white shark, however, the lack of sharp teeth alerted him that he must be inside of a whale’s mouth.
He believed he was stuck there for around 30 seconds, but managed to free himself by moving around and notifying the whale that there was a large object in his mouth.
Thankfully, he was spat out and only suffered a dislocated knee and some severe bruising.
YouTuber Zack D. Films created a little simulation of what happened to him, but he also created a simulation of what happens to your body if you were to be put into the same situation, and landed right in the sea creature’s stomach instead of being spat out.
Sadly, it seems like if you’re swallowed, it’s unlikely you’d survive.
The video shows a man swimming out at sea before a sperm whale nabs him in his mouth, quickly depositing him into his tiny throat before the man lands in his acid-filled stomach.
From there, the acids work to break down the man’s body, with the space depriving him of oxygen and the acids turning him into chowder.
Even though you might think, as huge creatures, everything inside of whales must also be giant, their throats are actually quite small, as per National Geographic.
It’s almost physically impossible for them to even swallow a human without choking to death.
The human is also likely to be crushed to death before even hitting the stomach chambers because of the powerful muscles of the throat, or suffocate due to the lack of air.
There’s also only one way to get out of the whale if you reach the stomach, which, dear reader, is the anus.
It’d take a miracle to survive the crushing throat tube, lack of oxygen, digestive acids and then an anus exit.
People in the comments were panicked when they realised the impossible situation, with one stating: “Claustrophobia would kill me by the time I go through the esophagus.”
Another wrote: “I thought bro was gonna tell me a way to save myself in a hypothetical situation of being consumed by sperm whale.”
Britt Jones