What if you are swallowed by a whale !

Something’s hiding beneath the water—can you spot it? Close encounters like this occur with whales more often than we realize. While the individuals in these videos managed to escape without serious harm, there's no ignoring the fact that they were just moments away from becoming a whale's meal. But what if they hadn't been so lucky? Could a human survive being swallowed by a whale? Has it ever happened? Let’s explore this hypothetical scenario.

If you’ve never seen a whale in person, it’s hard to fully grasp just how massive they are. For context, the blue whale is the biggest creature to ever live. Its tongue alone weighs as much as an elephant, and it could fit between 400 to 500 people inside its mouth. But we wouldn’t need to worry about being swallowed by one of these giants, as their anatomy makes it nearly impossible. Instead, we should be more concerned with their smaller relatives, like sperm whales.

In 1891, a story emerged of a man being swallowed by one of these whales. James Bartley, the man in question, supposedly survived the ordeal, though he was never quite the same. According to the story, a whale attacked his ship, and he was swallowed. He wasn’t found until the next day when the crew killed the whale. They cut it open to discover an unconscious but still alive James. His skin had turned white, and he was blind, likely due to the whale’s stomach acids. But as the years went on, people began to question the story—if James really had been swallowed, wouldn’t the stomach acids have caused more damage than just bleaching his skin?

With modern science, we can now examine this more closely. We discovered that if you were swallowed by a whale, surviving with just discolored skin would be the least of your worries. The first danger would be the whale’s teeth. Sperm whales have up to 50 teeth, each around 20 centimeters long—about the size of a large kitchen knife. If you somehow made it past them, you'd soon find yourself sliding down the whale’s throat. It would be dark, slimy, and extremely difficult to breathe, as the lack of oxygen and rising methane gas would make it even harder to stay conscious. As the whale’s throat muscles constrict to push you downward, the hydrochloric acid in the stomach would begin to dissolve your skin.

I know, you're thinking, this sounds pretty fishy, right? It doesn’t sound like James’ story is holding up. But let’s continue with the journey inside. After passing through the throat, you’d be dropped into the whale’s largest stomach. You could be in there for a while, but there’s a tiny silver lining: you might encounter some bioluminescent creatures, like glowing squid or tube worms, which the whale might have recently eaten. Sperm whales love to snack on neon flying squid, so enjoy the brief light show. But after that, you'd be tossed from one stomach to the next, with the acids slowly breaking down most of your body, reducing you to little more than bones, which would eventually be expelled through the whale’s anus.

So, it’s safe to say that surviving a whale’s stomach is virtually impossible. Sorry, James—your 1891 tale may have convinced people back then, but modern science has debunked it. As massive and intimidating as whales are, they have no interest in eating humans. If they could speak, they’d likely tell us that themselves—but that’s a "What If" for another day