Venezualan man briefly swallowed by humpback whale

oldbrownhat

oldbrownhat

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'I felt a slimy texture brush my face': Man describes being swallowed by whale

BBC article & short video here.

"...The Venezuelan kayaker had been paddling through the Strait of Magellan, off Chile's Patagonian coast, with his father when he felt something "hit me from behind, closing in on me and sinking me".

His father, Dall, was able to capture the short-lived ordeal on video just metres away...

""I felt a slimy texture brush my face," he recalled, adding that all he could see was dark blue and white...

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soFlaNative said:
C,mon now... he got lipped and spit.
I'd love to know what Humpty was thinking while he went after a mouthful of plastic.
Can whales swallow humans? Viral kayaker video explained : NPR
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True- he wasn't quite a modern-day Jonas. And the BBC article itself explains that the whale's throat is far too small to swallow a human:
Humpback whales have narrow throats "about the size of a household pipe" designed for swallowing small fish and shrimp, Brazilian conservationist Roched Jacobson Seba told the BBC.

"They physically cannot swallow large objects like kayaks, tires, or even big fish like tuna," he said.

"Ultimately, the whale spit out the kayak because it was physically impossible to swallow."

The humpback whale likely engulfed Adrián by accident, Mr Seba suggested.

"The whale was likely feeding on a school of fish when it unintentionally scooped up the kayak along with its meal.
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The whale's reaction was not recorded but it was probably the cetacean equivalent of:

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Humpback whales have very large mouths, maybe ten feet across. But their throats are no bigger than a human fist. They pick up huge volumes of water and krill, the water passes out through their teeth (baleen?), and they swallow the tiny krill. This whale was probably in the very act of a large intake of krill and water and never saw the kayak. Obviously, it couldn't swallow the man or the kayak, so they were ejected.

Nothing really exceptional there when you think about it from an anatomical perspective.

Neither the whale nor the man had a pleasant moment there! :D

I think every news channel on the globe carried this story due to Papa's video! :)
 
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don't tell me there aren't advantages to not being a sweet old guy
 
Mr. Vito said:
I guess the kayaker could have been crushed by the whale's jaws, so all in all he's pretty lucky.
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True. We can sit here comfortably Monday-morning-quarterbacking this but it must have been pretty scary at the time, when, unlike on a movie shoot, it's not carefully rehearsed and everyone knows what's going on :eek:
 
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