What to Do If You Are Swallowed by a Giant Whale?

you can barely open your eyes you're surrounded by darkness dampness and a terrible smell trying to figure out your situation by touch you discover that the walls surrounding the space you're in are covered with some kind of slime and goo and they breathe as if they are alive it's strange because just an hour ago you were on a yacht coursing through the open ocean wind blowing in your hair is it possible you suffered a shipwreck perhaps you're drowning body became a victim of a sea monster yes that's exactly right the slippery slimy barrier around you are the walls of a whale's stomach is there a chance for you to survive and more importantly escape first we need to figure out whether it's even possible for a whale to swallow a fully grown adult human being well according to experts it's conceivable that something like a blue whale from the baleen subspecies could easily engulf a human being whole the baleen is one of the largest creatures to ever have lived on the earth that's over the entire multi billion year history of life on our planet also beneficial to your survival in this case the baleen has no teeth so he isn't going to chew you up before he attempts to swallow you most dinosaurs don't even come close to the size of this see giant some billion individuals which let's not forget our mammals just like you and I reach 115 feet long or 35 meters and have a weight of 380,000 pounds that's roughly a hundred and seventy-three metric tons to put those numbers into perspective this is the equivalent of about 40 African elephants just the tongue of a baleen whale alone often weighs as much as three tons and its heart is bigger golfcart 90 tons of food and water can fit into this mega animal's mouth at one time it can also suck up to 11,000 pounds or 500 kilograms of plankton in a single slurp with such parameters this whale's mouth could fit not only you but also half the passengers from a ship like the Titanic but alas this is where the swallowing act ends a human body cannot advance further than the entrance to the whales throat in fact this monster size creature has a throat normally no bigger than the diameter of a golf ball and literally cannot swallow anything larger than a small grapefruit it's unlikely to ever be interested in something as big as a human being for lunch as the animal's digestive tract is designed for much much smaller prey but if one day on a doomed sea trip voyage and subsequent shipwreck you don't notice the approaching blue whale then you truly very well could accidentally end up in its mouth this journey would surely be unforgettable to say the least though in the end you may not be so overjoyed or even alive first of all you'll fall into total darkness and start to frantically flounder among the gobs and gobs of small fish and plankton which the whale is preparing for lunch after the giant filters out the water you'll find yourself in the midst of a viscous soup of all these creatures then he will begin trying to swallow all his food but as previously mentioned you simply won't fit into his throat according to one Phillip Mata a researcher at the University of South Florida the whale will probably just spit you out as if you were a cherry stone however even surviving this true salvation will still be far away literally by that I mean after eating a whale can dive as far as 650 feet or 200 meters below sea level and if you don't have any shall diving equipment with you well then at that depth you will most likely drown although lucky for you these animals more often digest food at a depth of around 65 feet or 20 meters in this case you really will have a chance to survive if you struggle with all your might to reach the surface and who knows the whale might even assist you by giving you a farewell slap with his powerful tail fin but falling into the jaws of a toothed whale such as in Orca or sperm whale is an entirely different story he in such a situation it will be that much more difficult to survive many of these animals are also pretty darn large individual sperm whales can reach 65 feet or 20 metres in length and can weigh as much as a hundred and ten thousand pounds that's fifty metric tons the lower jaw of a toothed whale opens down ninety degrees and their throat is big really big making it possible to swallow truly large prey and not just hold it in their mouths to spit out later it's not uncommon to find entire bodies of seals and other animals in their stomachs so they most likely would have no problem gulping down a human being unlike baleen whales the toothed whales are armed with large steak knife sized teeth that are also extraordinarily sharp therefore on the way into the sperm whale's mouth there's a high probability of getting ghastly wounds or injuries from its terrifying incisors there's quite a collection of documentary evidence where these dagger-like teeth have cut off the arms legs and sometimes even the heads of whalers in an instant so if you're lucky enough not to get cut going into the sperm whale's mouth then you'll find yourself relatively unscathed and you'll simply get swallowed then you will fly down the mucus membranes of the animal's digestive tract pitch darkness landing in the gastric sac with its viscous and fetid walls the whale actually has four stomachs just like a cow and you are in the first one and this is also most likely where your amazing journey will come to an end your body will quickly begin to disintegrate and dissolve in this deadly bath of gastric juices which by the way contain the ever horrifying hydrochloric acid in addition you will begin to suffocate as there is of course no air in the animal's stomach it is true that whales have gas pockets in their intestines but these are simply gaps in the intestinal tract filled with noxious methane these gas pockets definitely won't help you to breathe then again there are tons of stories on social networks about successful journeys through a whale stomach most experts however have de missed these stories as bogus merely being conveyed in order to attract attention and increase ratings nevertheless there is some documentary evidence for several of these incredible almost unbelievable events in 1896 the New York Times published a story that reported about a whaling expedition near the Falkland Islands the whalers ship star of the East lowered its boats and began hunting for their prey a huge sperm whale they wounded the Beast with a harpoon following which the whale tore up one of the boats and slipped away after a long search the team could not find the sailor from the sunken boat a man named James Bartley a few hours later the ship stumbled upon the now dead sperm whale the harpoon injury had eventually proven fatal the crew began to carve up the Beast and when they cut open the stomach they found something big unexpected and certainly out of place it turned out to be the missing sailor James Bartley he had spent almost sixteen hours inside the sea monster and was unconscious but still alive his hands and face had turned a deathly pale from the gastric juices he was reported to have looked more like a corpse than a living man his skin was covered in a thick net of wrinkles as if he had been boiled alive in a giant cauldron the patient spent the next fortnight in a state of near insanity he didn't seem to recognize any of his shipmates nor talked to any of them for several weeks finally at the end of the third week the Sailor came back to his senses and recovered enough that he was soon able to work again only the unnaturally pale skin on his face neck and hands those parts of his body that have been unprotected by clothing was reminiscent of his time in the stomach of the sperm whale they would always remind him and everyone else that he had once been swallowed whole by a Leviathan from the deep and lived to tell the tale the story of James Bartley aroused the interest of an English zoologist one professor Ambrose Wilson in the late 1920s he carefully reviewed the subject and came to the conclusion that the Sailor really could have survived in the stomach of the whale Wilson even unearthed another similar case from deep in some old archives in 1771 a sperm whale bit a whalers boat in half swallowed one of the sailors and disappeared underwater after some time passed the whales surfaced again and spat out his victim but tewi the Sailor was understandably frightened out of his gourd and quite badly scratched to boot but amazingly escaped without any serious injury that victim obviously wasn't to that particular animals taste but this doesn't mean others of the species won't consider other humans edible so if you somehow managed to find yourself in a whale's stomach first thing is not to panic the amount of air and therefore oxygen will most likely be catastrophic allele oh and your chance of dying from suffocation comes closer with every excess movement now everything depends on what type of whale it is it's quite difficult to figure this out well on the inside so try to determine what kind of animal it is before it swallows you since there is concentrated hydrochloric acid in the stomach you'll need to immediately find a way back up the esophagus otherwise your skin will receive as previously discussed painful and deadly birds you'll also need to move much faster through the belly of a toothed whale in order to get through all four chambers of its stomach the real fun begins when your acid burned body gets to the throat if this is a toothless blue whale you've got to shrink down to the size of a tennis ball to get out obviously this is impossible but it's the only way to get out so I had to mention it maybe your pet cat or Chihuahua might make it if you happen to bring them with you if it is a toothy sperm whale you can get out and into the mouth no problem but after that you'll have to get through the phalanx of sharp dagger-like teeth when you successfully get through these you'll finally find yourself free but perhaps - a hand or a leg which would probably be useful at this point as you need to swim to the nearest safe spot but remember even getting into the sperm whale's stomach and one whole piece is almost impossible in the first place these monsters like us really do masticate their food quite well before sending it on to digest further down below in a nutshell your chances of surviving are pitifully minuscule at best if you liked the video leave a thumbs up subscribe to our Channel and if you haven't already done so press the Bell button to always be there on time to watch the latest greatest videos and don't forget to tell all your friends about us as with Riddle the more the merrier [Music]

Channel: Ridddle

Views: 7,382,554

Rating: 4.875083 out of 5

Keywords: what if a whale eats you, whale documentaries, are whales dangerous, whale attacks, james bartley, man who was swallowed by a whale and survived, killer whale, sperm whale, how to survive a whale attack, biggest whale in the world, Swallowed by a Whale, Whale, What to Do, what if, ridddle, riddle

Id: zKhofSqYOAk

Length: 13min 12sec (792 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 03 2019