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