I'm only going to speak in animated gifs in this thread. ;)

[Balasarius]

Whales are awesome. “Don’t mind me, puny human, I’m just eatin’.”

[JMR]

You would be kinda fucked if it swallowed you by accident.

[hong]

I don’t think the whale could swallow you. Its throat isn’t big enough; it’s designed for eating krill and small fishies, not humans. So you’d lodge in its throat and choke it to death, after which it would sink to the bottom of the ocean, taking you with it.

[sinnick]

That’s much better.

[BrianRubin]

I don’t think the whale could swallow you. Its throat isn’t big enough; it’s designed for eating krill and small fishies, not humans. So you’d lodge in its throat and choke it to death, after which it would sink to the bottom of the ocean, taking you with it.

And the winner for “Most Uplifting Thought of the Morning” is…hong…

Jeeeeesus dude…

[jerri_blank]

I don’t think the whale could swallow you. Its throat isn’t big enough; it’s designed for eating krill and small fishies, not humans. So you’d lodge in its throat and choke it to death, after which it would sink to the bottom of the ocean, taking you with it.

I SUGGEST YOU READ YOUR BIBLE.

[Donald_L]

[John_Many_Jars]

The Bible sides with Pinocchio on this point.

[kerzain]

As a very young child I lost my shit when my parents took me on a ride through Monstro the Whale’s mouth in Storybook Land at Disneyland.

I’m not sure if I carry any post traumatic stress from that, I’ll have to go swimming with the whales to find out.

[Kalle]

I don’t think the whale could swallow you. Its throat isn’t big enough; it’s designed for eating krill and small fishies, not humans. So you’d lodge in its throat and choke it to death, after which it would sink to the bottom of the ocean, taking you with it.

Seems kinda stupid to me if whales can’t use their tongue to clean out stuff that’s stuck in their mouth. I wish I knew more about this. No, the whale will probably survive swallowing you. But you’ll likely drown before it gets around to spitting you out.

[Tin_Wisdom]

[Snip, whale video]

There’s surprisingly little screaming in the video.

It turns out that both the kayaker and the surfer (not to mention the cameraman) had paddled over to the area because they had seen the whales surface nearby earlier, so the proximity may not have been much of a surprise.

[kerzain]

Oh well that sounds reasonable, intentionally kayaking to the exact spot where whales are breaching.

[Mr_Bismarck]

[Scrax]

[Rasputin]

Seems kinda stupid to me if whales can’t use their tongue to clean out stuff that’s stuck in their mouth. I wish I knew more about this. No, the whale will probably survive swallowing you. But you’ll likely drown before it gets around to spitting you out.

After watching that video, I posted to Mythbusters about it. While it can’t swallow you, when a humpback surface feeds like that it dislocates its jaw to allow water to swell its throat down to about mid-body, making a giant bucket of a maw that’s 5m across. It could totally engulf a human in there, the only question being what would happen to you as the “cheeks” contracted when it expels the water.

I mean, check this shit out:

[Lizard_King]

[Kalle]

Yeah. Sorry, “swallow” was the wrong word to use. I just doubt that the whale would somehow suffer from accidentally catching a human in it’s maw. Catching unwanted stuff along with the fish can’t be that unusual, it ought to be able to spit you out. Eventually. Regardless, any human ending up inside that maw is not likely to survive the experience.

[MattKeil]

I also don’t think there’s any record of a human actually getting caught in a baleen whale’s krill gulp. There are so many other animals around during a baitball feeding frenzy that the whales must have a method of avoiding getting larger animals like sharks and dolphins in their mouths.

[Rasputin]

And that’s why I asked Mythbusters! Who doesn’t want Buster in a mockup of a whale’s mouth?

[BrianRubin]

LESS TALK MOAR GIF