A Venezuelan kayaker, paddling through the Strait of Magellan off Chile’s Patagonian coast, was luckily unharmed when he was ‘swallowed’ by a whale.

According to an article published by BBC, Adrián Simancas was kayaking with his father, Dell Simancas, who filmed a video as the massive mammal suddenly surfaced and appeared to swallow his son and his boat.

“I spent a second realising I was inside the mouth of something, that maybe it had eaten me, that it could have been an orca or a sea monster,” Simancas told BBC.

Adrián began to think about how he might survive inside the humpback whale, ‘like Pinocchio’, when the whale spat him out, he told BBC.

Can a whale swallow a human?

According to whalescientists.com, baleen whales, including blue, humpback and grey whales, are filter feeders. They have baleen plates instead of teeth, which are made of keratin, allowing them to filter small prey such as krill, plankton and small fish from the water.

The feeding process of baleen whales involves taking in large amounts of water and prey, then pushing the water out through their baleen plates while retaining the food. This is called filter feeding.

“However, while their mouth is huge and can ingest tons of krill each day, the size of their oesophagus when at rest is relatively small, typically no larger than a tennis ball. Even though they can inflate their oesophagus by 30% when they feed, it makes it biologically impossible for them to swallow a human.

“Even if a human were to end up in the mouth of a baleen whale, the whale would likely spit them out since they are not equipped to swallow such large objects.”

Toothed whales – including sperm, beaked and killer whales, dolphins and porpoises – have teeth and actively hunt larger prey such as fish, squid and sometimes seals.

“Their oesophagus, although larger than that of baleen whales compared to their body size, is still incapable of swallowing a human whole.”

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