What If You Were Swallowed by a Whale?

WHAT IF

What are your your chances of survival should you be accidentally swallowed by a whale?

Transcript

00:00 Something is lurking in the water.

00:04 Do you see it?

00:06 "Holy!"

00:11 Close calls like this happen with whales

00:14 more often than you might expect.

00:16 And although the people in these videos

00:18 got away relatively unscathed,

00:21 there's no denying that they were just

00:23 meters away from being a whale's lunch.

00:28 But what would happen if they hadn't been so lucky?

00:32 Could a human body survive being swallowed by a whale?

00:37 Has it ever happened before?

00:40 This is WHAT IF,

00:42 and here's what would happen

00:43 if you were swallowed by a whale.

00:49 If you've never seen a whale up close,

00:51 it's hard to comprehend just how monstrous

00:54 they can really be.

00:55 To put it in perspective,

00:57 the blue whale is the largest animal on the planet.

01:01 Its tongue alone weighs as much as an elephant,

01:04 and it can fit anywhere between

01:06 400 and 500 people in its mouth.

01:10 But we wouldn't have to worry about one of these guys

01:12 swallowing us anytime soon,

01:15 because their anatomy makes it nearly impossible.

01:18 Instead, we should be more concerned

01:21 with their smaller cousins, sperm whales.

01:24 In 1891, reports emerged that a man

01:28 had been swallowed by one of these whales.

01:30 And although he lived to tell the tale,

01:34 he would never be the same again.

01:38 According to the story,

01:39 James Bartley was swallowed when a whale attacked his ship,

01:43 and he wasn't retrieved until the following day.

01:46 When the crew found and killed the whale,

01:49 they quickly brought it on board their ship

01:51 and cut it open,

01:52 revealing an unconscious but very alive James Bartley.

01:56 His face and arms were bleached white,

01:59 and he was blind,

02:01 all thanks to the stomach acids of the whale.

02:05 However, as the years went by,

02:07 people started poking holes in this story,

02:09 and questioned whether James had really been swallowed by a whale.

02:13 I mean, wouldn't the stomach acids do more damage

02:16 than just bleaching his skin?

02:18 Well, with the power of science,

02:20 we took a closer look,

02:22 and we quickly discovered that if you get swallowed by a whale,

02:26 coming back out with shiny white skin

02:28 would be the least of your worries.

02:31 So the first thing you'd have to worry about once you were swallowed

02:34 would be getting shredded to pieces

02:36 by the sperm whale's impressive set of teeth.

02:39 Each tooth is approximately 20 cm (1.2 in) long.

02:43 That's about the length of an average chef knife,

02:45 and whales have anywhere from 40 to 50 of these.

02:49 Let's say you're lucky enough to make it past all of them.

02:53 Next, you'd begin your descent down the throat.

02:56 Not only would it be dark and slimy down here,

02:59 but you'd also find it hard to breathe,

03:01 due to the lack of oxygen,

03:03 and an increase in methane gas.

03:05 As the whale's throat muscles constricted in and out to help force you down,

03:10 you'd also start to feel hydrochloric acid beginning to eat away at your skin.

03:15 I know what you're thinking.

03:16 We just got into this whale,

03:17 and James Bartley's story already seems pretty fishy.

03:22 Well, you're not wrong,

03:23 but what would be the fun in stopping now?

03:27 So next, you'd be dropped into the first and largest of the whale's four stomachs.

03:32 You'd probably be in there for a while,

03:34 but on the bright side,

03:36 you might have some light in the form of a bioluminescent squid or two

03:40 being noshed on after your arrival.

03:42 Sperm whales love neon-flying squid.

03:46 You'd better enjoy this brief light show,

03:48 because after this,

03:49 you'd just be tossed from one stomach to the next,

03:53 with the acids breaking down almost all of your body,

03:56 until you're just a bunch of bones

03:58 being unceremoniously ejected from the whale's anus.

04:03 So yeah, it's pretty safe to say that there's no way you could be swallowed whole by a whale,

04:09 and live to tell the tale.

04:12 Sorry, James.

04:13 You may have been able to fool people in the 1890s,

04:15 but we're on to you now.

04:18 As vast as they are, and as monstrous as they might seem to us,

04:22 whales actually have no interest in eating humans.

04:25 And if they could talk,

04:27 they would probably make a point of telling us that.

04:31 But that's a topic for another WHAT IF.

04:35 [outro music]

Category

Transcript

Recommended