The man who was inside the whale. Sperm whales

“And the Lord commanded the great whale to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the whale for three days and three nights.” But the matter ended happily, the swallowed man begged for mercy, the whale spat him out, and the prophet still managed to save the inhabitants of Nineveh from death, warning them that if they did not repent of their sins, the city would be destroyed.

Could something like this really happen? In 1896, off the Falkland Islands, the American whaling ship Eastern Star was attacked by a huge sperm whale. Swinging his tail, he knocked one of the sailors, James Bartley, off the deck into the water. Teammates thought James had drowned. However, when, after two days of chasing this whale, they finally caught it, lifted it onto the deck and began to cut it up, in its stomach they found, as the New York Times wrote on November 26, 1896, “something twisted, from time to time showing signs of life.” . It turned out to be the missing sailor, unconscious but alive. He spent 36 hours inside the sea monster.

The English zoologist Ambrose Wilson, who pondered this problem in the 1920s, believed that the survival of a person swallowed by a whale was in principle possible. It all depends on which whale swallows it and how long the victim remains in the stomach. The baleen whale feeds on plankton and cannot swallow anything larger than a grapefruit. However, a large sperm whale weighs up to 50 tons and is up to 20 meters long. It consumes one and a half tons of food per day and swallows it mostly without chewing. Professor Wilson dug up in the archives a case from 1771, when a sperm whale bit a whaling boat in half, swallowed one sailor and went deeper into the depths. Resurfacing again, he spat out the sailor, “severely scratched, but without serious injuries.”

Modern scientists confirm the Englishman’s conclusions. The sperm whale feeds on cephalopods and, to a lesser extent, on fish. A person could easily fit in the mouth of a sperm whale or in its esophagus. The sperm whale has teeth on the lower jaw, but only one or two pairs on the upper jaw, so it often swallows its victims whole. So, in the 50s of the last century, a ten-meter squid, not chewed or digested, was found in the stomach of a sperm whale caught off the Azores. Squids, apparently, remain alive in the stomach for some time, since traces of the suckers with which the squid’s tentacles are equipped are visible on the walls of the stomach. This means that a person can survive for some time. True, the sailor, swallowed in November 1896, showed the results of whale digestion: as the newspaper wrote at the time, “Bartley’s skin was digested in places. His hands and face were so pale that he looked like a dead man, and his skin was all covered with wrinkles, as if he had been boiled in a cauldron.”

But in general, the sailor clearly did not end up in the main section of the stomach, where digestive enzymes and hydrochloric acid are secreted, but lingered in its first section, lined with keratinized cells and occupied only with the mechanical processing of what was swallowed. The channel leading to the next sections of the whale's stomach, where there is gastric juice, is too narrow for a person to pass through.

As for the ability to breathe in the stomach of a whale, experts suggest that the sperm whale, together with James Bartley, could have swallowed a volume of air sufficient for a person to breathe for some time. But a three-day stay in the stomach of a whale, as happened to Jonah, is actually impossible. This story must be understood as a moralizing allegory.

Almost four years have passed since our trip to Mauritius, where we supposedly dived with sperm whales. And all these four years I lied shamelessly! All this time I was fantasizing, droolingly describing what wonderful meetings these were, how smart and kind sperm whales are. (). And many people naively believed, were happy for us and even began to dream of experiencing such a meeting in their lives.
But there were always people who were very skeptical about my stories and who said something like this: “sperm whales, they are predators, how could you swim with them, they immediately ate you!” or “what an inventor you are! You should have told me that you can swim with sharks!” And hearing the story about how my eleven-year-old son scratched a sperm whale’s belly, many people didn’t say anything, but it was clear that they could hardly restrain the desire to twirl their index finger at their temple, and they probably thought to themselves, “well, I completely lied, Munchausen is fucking !".
So, I scoured the Internet and realized why people are so skeptical about my stories about sperm whales. And everything that I wrote about them is a shameless lie, and my photographs where freedivers swim next to them are naked photoshop!
It's time to reveal the whole truth about these huge predatory creatures and their danger to people. To do this, I will publish information found on the Internet, and to add acuity of perception, I will dilute this chilling truth with my B&W photographs.

Danger!!!
“In exceptional cases, sperm whales attack people, although they are capable of swallowing an adult person whole. A case is described when sperm whale hunters managed to catch one very large specimen, in the belly of which three almost digested corpses were found.

Sperm whale swallowing people
“The sperm whale is the only whale whose pharynx theoretically allows it to swallow a person whole without chewing (and, generally speaking, the only animal capable of doing this). However, despite the large number of deaths when hunting sperm whales, these whales apparently , extremely rarely they swallowed people who fell into the water. The only relatively reliable case (it was even documented by the British Admiralty) occurred in 1891 near the Falkland Islands. A sperm whale crashed a boat from the British whaling schooner "Star of the East", one sailor died and another, harpooner James Bartley went missing and was also presumed dead. The sperm whale that sank the boat was killed a few hours later; the cutting of his carcass continued all night; by the morning, the whalers, having reached the insides of the whale, found James Bartley, unconscious, in his stomach. Bartley survived, although not without health consequences. His scalp lost its pigment and his skin remained papery white. Bartley had to leave whaling, but he was able to make a good living by showing himself at fairs as a man who had been in the belly of a whale, like the biblical Jonah.

“The sperm whale does not chew food, it can only tear very large prey into pieces in order to swallow it. It swallows all small things (up to an eighteen-meter mollusk) whole. Now do you understand what a person is for a sperm whale? More than nine times smaller than that same mollusk !

By the way, it’s worth remembering here the story when the schooner “Star of the East” caught a sperm whale, and when it ripped open its “abdomen” they found three human skeletons there, whole and unharmed. It’s scary to think about what these three unfortunates experienced and what kind of death they had...

But sperm whales never attack people, you can safely object. And you will be one hundred percent right. So what is the danger? And the danger lies in the nervous system of this gentle giant. The nervous system of the sperm whale is extremely unstable; it is very easy to frighten it with the usual clapping of oars in the water. And now the sperm whale, already scared to death, is dangerous in its fear. It is because of fear that a sperm whale can swallow a man, his boat, or sink a five-ton ship..."

In the Bible, in the Old Testament, the sea creature that swallowed Jonah is called the word “lag,” which means “big fish” or “monster of the deep sea.”

Interestingly, of the 75 species and 39 genera of cetaceans, only a few genera can stand up for those who argue that a whale cannot swallow a person. These whales reach 18-20 meters in length. But, despite their size, they have a very small throat.

There is also another type of whale - the "bottle-nosed" or "beaked" whale. These are small whales, up to 9 meters. They have a fairly large throat and could easily swallow a person.

But these whales chew their food, so this excludes Jonah being in the womb in its entirety.

Now consider the types of whales that could swallow the prophet. They have no teeth, but are equipped with whalebone.

Fin whales attract special attention. They reach a length of 26 meters, their stomach has 4-6 chambers, and a small group of people could easily fit in any of them. These whales breathe air, so they have a small air chamber in their heads, which is an extension of the nasal cavities. Before swallowing an object, the whale pushes it into this chamber. If the object turns out to be too large, the whale swims to shallow water, closer to the shore, and throws away the burden.

Dr. Ranson Harvey said that his friend weighed 80 kg. crawled through the mouth of a dead whale into the air chamber, and a dog that fell overboard a whaling ship was found alive six days later in the air chamber of a dead whale. From what has been said, it is clear that Jonah could have stayed “in the belly,” that is, in the air chamber of such a whale, for three days and three nights, remaining alive.

An interesting discovery was made by Frank Bullen, the famous author of The Swimming of the Sperm Whale, who established that sperm whales often vomit the contents of their stomachs before death. Thus, Jonah could not only be swallowed, but also thrown out by the whale.

There is also a version that the prophet could well have ended up in the stomach of other sea creatures, for example, a whale or bone shark. The fish got this name because it has no teeth. The whale shark reaches 21 meters.

It filters food through large plates (whiskers) in its mouth and has a stomach quite large, where a person can fit.

Literary Digest once wrote that a sailor was swallowed by a whale shark. After 48 hours, this fish was killed. When it was opened, what was the surprise of all those present when the swallowed sailor was found alive, only in an unconscious state. Moreover, he did not have any serious injuries, except for hair loss and several blisters on the skin.

There is another known case that occurred in the Hawaiian Islands. Japanese fishermen caught a great white shark. A complete human skeleton was found in her stomach. It turned out that it was a soldier listed as a deserter wearing North American Army clothing.

Whaling before its mechanization was associated with increased risk, largely due to the fact that wounded sperm whales, becoming enraged, attacked the whalers' boats, and often the whaling ships themselves. The strength of a sperm whale, even a wounded one, is enough to break a boat with one blow of its head or tail in a retaliatory attack. Thus, sperm whales account for many of the lives of whaler sailors. Therefore, catching sperm whales was considered a particularly difficult and dangerous occupation among whalers. As one of the sperm whale hunters recalled,

To kill a harpooned sperm whale - if it can be done at all - sometimes takes only ten minutes, and sometimes a whole day, if not more. In general, the advantage is still on the side of the whaler, but nevertheless, as long as the object of pursuit is alive, you can never say in advance who will go to the next world - the boat crew or the whale.

In the past, individual sperm whales were known among whalers to kill many sailors. They were even given names, and the whalers knew these sperm whales themselves, treated them with respect and tried not to touch them. One of the most famous of these sperm whales was a huge old male nicknamed Timor Jack, about whom there were legends that he allegedly destroyed every boat sent against him. There were also sperm whales named New Zealand Jack, Pyti Tom, Don Miguel and others.

The incident became widely known when in 1820 an enraged sperm whale twice hit the American 230-ton whaling ship Essex with its head and sank it. The crew of the Essex managed to escape and land on the island, but the people suffered incredible hardships, as a result of which only 8 out of 21 sailors survived.

The second reliable case of the death of a whaling ship occurred in 1851 - off the Galapagos Islands, a sperm whale sank the American whaler Anne Alexander, and this happened very close to the place where the Essex was sunk. Before attacking the ship, the sperm whale managed to destroy two boats. Fortunately, there were no casualties, as the crew was rescued two days later. The whale that sent this ship to the bottom was killed some time later by another whaler. Two harpoons belonging to the crew of the Anne Alexander were found in the sperm whale carcass.

Sperm whale swallowing people

The sperm whale is the only whale whose pharynx theoretically allows it to swallow a person whole without chewing (and, generally speaking, the only animal capable of doing this). However, despite the large number of deaths when hunting sperm whales, these whales apparently only rarely swallowed people who fell into the water. The only relatively reliable case (it was even documented by the British Admiralty) occurred in 1891 near the Falkland Islands, and even in this case many doubtful aspects remain. A sperm whale crashed a boat from the British whaling schooner "Star of the East", one sailor died, and the other, harpooner James Bartley, went missing and was also presumed dead. The sperm whale that sank the boat was killed a few hours later; the cutting of his carcass continued all night. By morning, the whalers, having reached the insides of the whale, found James Bartley, who was unconscious, in his stomach.

The Story of James Bartley.

This was his first voyage in 1891 on board the ship "Star of the East". When a whale was spotted half a mile from the ship, young Bartley jumped into a boat with other whalers and the race for the whale began.
They crept up so close from behind that the harpooner bent down and plunged his weapon deep into the whale, hitting vital organs. The whale began to thrash and the crew desperately rowed away from the whale as it rampaged. Then the whale began to dive, there was silence and everyone was waiting to see where the whale would swim up.

The rowers were preparing to defend themselves. Without warning, the whale split the longboat with its head and began snapping its jaws at the men and thrashing wildly. The water turned into bloody foam. Another longboat picked up the survivors, but two were lost.

Just before sunset, a dead whale surfaced a few hundred yards from the ship. Having dragged it onto the ship, the sailors began to cut up the carcass, and were very surprised to find the lost Bartley in the stomach. He was alive, but unconscious.

As a result, he spent 15 hours in the whale's stomach, Bartley lost all the hair on his body and lost his sight. His skin lost its pigment and remained white until the end of his days.

James Bartley never went to sea again, settled on the river bank and made a living by telling the story of how he was in the stomach of a whale. He died after living another 18 years.

/ What happens if a whale swallows a man?

What happens if a whale swallows a person?

In fact, such a situation is not very realistic, and the point here is the feeding habits of whales. All whales are divided into 2 large categories - toothed whales and baleen whales. The first - sperm whales, dolphins and a couple of other small families - feed on fish and marine mammals (however, they will not refuse the unwary waterfowl).
Even a school of bottlenose dolphins can cope with a person, but cases of them attacking a person are extremely rare. The killer whale and the sperm whale are more famous for this - their body size and esophagus will allow them to eat a person, but alas - they catch with their teeth, and you will enter the esophagus in the form of a puzzle, which even an experienced traumatologist is unlikely to assemble... and you will simply be digested like an ordinary person fur seal. However, scientists believe that whales (and sharks, too, by the way) attack a person because they confuse his figure (especially a surfer on a board) with a seal. Well, baleen whales... They amaze with their gigantic sizes, in particular, the blue whale - up to 33 meters and up to 160 tons in weight - but the throat of these animals, which feed on small fish and krill (small crustaceans), is only 10 cm in diameter, and you simply won’t get through there. So the exciting stories about people who were swallowed by a whale and ripped open its belly in order to get free are nothing more than a colorful fiction. This is much more likely to happen with ordinary river catfish - some specimens reached 5 meters, and they prefer to swallow prey without chewing.