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A viral video appears to show a humpback hulk gobble up a kayaker off the coast of South America before apace spitting him out again .
Adrián Simancas was kayak with his sire in the Strait of Magellan in Chile last Saturday ( Feb. 8) when the whale break out of the water and seemed to shut its sass around Simancas and his kayak . For a few seconds , the whale and Simancas disappear beneath the wafture .
A humpback whale (not the one involved in the kayak incident) breaking the surface of the water to feed in Chile.
" I cogitate I was dead , " Simancas toldThe Associated Press(AP ) . " I think it had eaten me , that it had swallowed me . "
The giant did n’t hold onto Simancas for long as he soon popped back up at the surface . Then , as the terrified kayaker tread water system , the hulk hunched its spine and dive back down into the ocean . Simancas ' beginner , Dell , see the whole incident on television before assisting his Word out of the H2O . The pair take back to shore unharmed , AP reported .
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A humpback whale (not the one involved in the kayak incident) breaking the surface of the water to feed in Chile.
Do humpback whales eat people?
Humpback whales ( Megaptera novaeangliae ) tip on small fish and crustaceans . To eat enough to affirm their monumental sizing , the whales takestretchy mouthfulsof more than5,000 gallons(23,000 liters ) of saltwater and filter out their prey across baleen plates — kind of like long hirsute tooth that filter rather than chomp . This strategy germinate for hunting small animals , not humans in kayaks .
Erich Hoyt , a research buster at Whale and Dolphin Conservation in the U.K. and author of theEncyclopedia of Whales , Dolphins , and Porpoises(Firefly Books , 2023 ) , recount Live Science that the whale in the TV almost for certain snap up the kayaker by stroke .
" It ’s not clean from the video whether the kayaker was whole in the giant ’s rima oris , " Hoyt said . " He could have been partly in spite of appearance but I ’m certain the hulk would have expelled him instantly . "
This is n’t the first prison term a whale has appeared to gobble someone up incidentally . In 2020,a like viral videoshowed a humpback whale coming out of the water and closing its lip around two kayakers in California . The kayakers were floating above a heavy swarm of fish when the whale add up up , CBC reportedat the metre . The humpback immediately unloosen the kayakers , who were unhurt in the incident .
In 2021 , a lobster diver off Massachusetts estimated that he was in ahumpback hulk ’s mouth for 30 secondsbefore being spat out . Whale research worker suggested at the metre that the diver may have also swam too close to the whale ’s food and been by chance gobbled up with it .
Hoyt said that humans are too large to be swallow by a hunchback giant . investigator have studied hunchback whales with Cassin ’s auklet seabirds ( Ptychoramphus aleuticus)in their stomachs , which were presumably accidentally swallowed . However , those raspberry are only about 9 inches ( 23 centimeters ) long , Live Science previously reported .
While humpbacks do n’t eat people , they have occasionally injured humans when they ’ve felt threatened . In 2020 , a humpback mum — likely trying to protect her calf — charged swimmer in Australiaand sent two to the infirmary . However , the metal money is well known for occasionallysaving other animalsfrom marauder likekiller whales(Orcinus orca ) than harming humans .
Killer whales
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Simancas was talking to his father about killer whales shortly before the incident with the humpback whale rent position ( killer whale giant alsolive off the coast of Chile ) . He told AP that he remember the giant might have been a orca whale at first . However , even if that were the case , a human in the sea has piffling to revere from a killer whale whale .
" There are no case of a wild Orcinus orca whale killing and eating a human being either , " Hoyt said .
Some orcas have a habit ofattacking boats in southwest Europe , and the species haskilled humanswhen kept in imprisonment , but there ’s only one confirm compositor’s case of a wildorca prick a human . That ill-fated someone was a surfer in California in 1972 , who the orca plausibly mistook for a seal of approval .
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