The researchers believe that the behavior of swallowing and releasing a boatman of humpback whale off Chile is entirely due to accident.
A video of a fever capturing the moment when the humpback whale swallowed a boatman off the coast of South America, then quickly released the victim. Adrián Simancas was rowing with his father in the Magellan Strait in Chile on February 8 when the whale rushed out of the water and seemed to swallow the full Simancas and his Kayak. In a few seconds, both whales and Simancas disappeared under the waves. “I thought I was dead. I thought he had eaten and swallowed me,” AP quoted Simancas.
The whale does not suck the Simancas in the mouth for a long time when it swims back to the water. Later, while the boatman panicked to turn the water, the whales dive and dive into the deep sea. Simancas’s father, Dell, recorded the entire accident and pulled his son out of the water. The father and my father returned to the shore safely.
Humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) Specializing in eating small fish and crustaceans. To eat enough amount to maintain the massive size, whales open their mouths to swallow more than 23,000 liters of seawater and filter the bait through the horned sheet, like the comb to filter it instead of biting. This tactic evolved to hunt for small animals, not a boatman.
Erich Hyt, a graduate student in the Organization of the Bonle and Dolphin conservation in the UK, said the whale in the video is almost sure to swallow the boatman by accident. “From the video, it is unclear whether the boatman will completely fall into the mouth of the whale. He may not get all the whole person but I am sure the whale releases him immediately,” HoYT speculated.
This is not the first time whales seem to swallow someone wrong. In 2020, a similar video shows that humpback whale from the water and shut around the two people rowing in California. They were floating above the large herd when the whale appeared. The humpbacked whale immediately released them and they were not injured in the accident. In 2021, a diver caught lobster off Massachusetts estimated that he was in the mouth of a humpback whale 30 seconds before being released. Whale researchers speculate that at the time, maybe divers swim too close to the food source of the whale and accidentally swallowed.
According to HoYT, people are too big for humpback whales to swallow. Humpback whales experts have found Ptychoramphus Aleuticus in their stomach. However, this bird is only 23 cm long. Although humpback whale does not eat people, sometimes they can cause injury to humans if threatened. In 2020, a humpback whale chasing people swimming in Australia and causing two people to be hospitalized, most likely to protect the young child. However, they also save other animals from meat -eating animals like killer whales (Orcinus orca).
Simancas shared initially, he was wrong with humpback whale with killer whales. However, HOYT emphasized that there is no case of wild killer whales kill and eat human meat. Some assassins attacked boats in southwestern Europe and kept and lethal individuals. But the only confirmation of the wild killer whales is a diver in California in 1972, maybe the animal mistook the victim as a seal.