The short video below of a humpback whale swallowing a man in a kayak has been making social media rounds and there has been some confusion and speculation about what really happed.
“I thought it had already eaten me and swallowed me,” Adrián Simancas told the Associated Press in an interview about his shock encounter off the coast of Chilean Patagonia.
And, the clip does seem to show that Simancas was in the wrong place at the wrong time just when rthe giand humpback opened its giant maw as it was feeding along the coast. It certainly looks like the whale then spat out both the man and his kayack.
Danny Groves, head of communications at Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC) sought to set the srecord straight. “”This latest news of a man being swallowed by a whale is not quite what it seems as it isn’t possible for this whale to swallow this man! Though a humpback could easily fit a human inside its huge mouth, it’s scientifically impossible for the whale to swallow a person once inside. A humpback’s throat is roughly the size of a human fist.”
Humpbacks are baleen whales., They feed by taking huge gulps of water, hopefully full of small fish, and filter out the water through their baleen bristles. Once the water is gone, the whale can then swallow the fish and plankton.
“It is likely that this is what this particular whale was doing,” says Groves. “We humans are not on their menu. This whale was simply going about his or her daily routine unaware that someone in a small boat was nearby.”
So, Simancas is not another Jonah. He’s just one lucky guy to have met a whale that was not a man eater.
