Being swallowed by the whales we see in cartoons and stories can sound a little scary. We have witnessed several examples of this situation in the world. Pinocchio swallowed by a whale; While describing the inside of his stomach as a dark, cold and wet place, this moment was visualized in our eyes. But would we be as lucky as Pinocchio if we were swallowed by one of the wild whales in the oceans in real life?
If you’ve never seen a whale in real life, it’s hard to imagine how gigantic these animals are. If we consider the blue whale, the largest animal in the world, we can understand this situation more easily. Blue whales’ mouths alone weigh more than the average elephant, which means an average of 400 people would fit in the whale’s mouth!
Judging by the anatomy of whales, is it really possible for them to swallow humans?
Whales’ throats are surprisingly narrow, even though their mouths and stomachs appear gigantic. The structure of their throats is barely wide enough for a human arm, the researchers say. A little hard to believe, we admit. They should only be able to cut and swallow a human being anyway, which doesn’t seem like a possible way. Because most whales do not have teeth to tear us apart.
Instead, they feed on a “whale stick”. Whale stick is a tooth-like limb found in the mouth of toothless whales, in the form of thin long plates up to 4-5 m in length, arranged as two rows of fringes along the upper jaw, resembling a toothbrush, and serving as a tooth so that food can be collected and retained in the mouth.
In 1891, it was recorded that sailor James Bartley was swallowed by a sperm type whale.
There is something more interesting than the person who was swallowed by the sperm whale, which is known as the most dangerous of the species, which was announced by James Bartley himself, who was swallowed by the whale. According to the story, the sailor’s ship was attacked by a whale; The sailor who was attacked by the giant whale was swallowed by the whale during the attack and did not appear until the next day!
The crew, who started to search for Bartley, came across their friends when they neutralized the whale and looked inside. Allegedly, Bartley’s arms and face turned white due to the acids in the whale’s stomach; his eyes were also blinded by this acid.
So is stomach acid all you have to worry about when swallowed by a whale?
In fact, the first thing to worry about is that the teeth of whale species with tusks are as sharp as a chef’s knife. Can you imagine yourself about 20 cm long and between 40 teeth? You can’t because you probably won’t be alive trying to get through the sharp teeth.
Let’s say you are lucky enough to pass all of these teeth. What will happen next?
Your first stop will be the whale’s throat. This place has both a dark and mucous structure. Worse than these, it is very deficient in oxygen and very rich in methane gas. Therefore, breathing in the throat part will become more and more a torture.
At that time, the throat of the whale trying to swallow you will contract in and out, these contractions will give you pain as they occur, and you will gradually begin to feel the hydraulic acids that penetrate every part of your skin.
When we learned this, we all thought the same thing, didn’t we? Yes, probably the famous story of James Bartley being swallowed by a whale was just a lie or an illusion.
Where is the next stop?
After passing through the throat of whales with four stomachs, the first stop will be the largest stomach. Here you will spend some painful time with the bioluminescent squid. After the good time spent with the lighted squids, you will switch from this stomach to the other stomach.
In the second stomach, where the grinding process takes place, the acids will break your whole body into small particles. After that, the few remaining main bones will be ground and expelled with the whale’s excrement. So when you are swallowed by a whale, the possibility of coming out of the whale’s stomach and telling this story is actually not even a possibility.
Fortunately, we don’t need to be afraid. Humans are not an attractive food for whales.
No matter how wild and big they may seem from the outside, it is strange that whales are not interested in humans. Both their anatomical structures are not suitable for swallowing a human and they mostly feed on sea creatures.
But assuming an exception occurs, you’ll probably have 3 minutes to survive before you drown. Because whales do not have oxygen in their stomachs to breathe. This gives us an average of 3 minutes.
The researchers state that the odds of anyone encountering a sperm whale in the ocean, in particular, are one in a million, because these whales live in the ocean at a depth of about 3,000 kilometers. We don’t need to be afraid!
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