In terms of size, the humpback whale is obviously not the largest of the whales, it can probably only rank 6th, and the 5 "big brothers" in front of it are blue whales, baleen whales, bowhead whales, right whales and sperm whales. Still, humpback whales, with an average body length of 14 meters and a weight of more than 30 tons, are still enough to crush humans in absolute strength. If escape is a miracle, then it is impossible to escape from the mouth of a humpback whale!
However, what happened to a man in England who survived unscathed after being swallowed in the mouth by a humpback whale?
Michael is an experienced commercial diver who performs diving operations in the summer of 2021 in an area near Cape Cod, Massachusetts, USA. Once, when Michael dived into 14 meters of water, he was suddenly hit by a heavy object. Michael felt like he had hit a 100-ton truck.
Immediately afterward, his eyes were pitch black, as if he were wrapped in the sea and plunged into a huge bottomless pit. He calmed down a little, judging that he must have been swallowed in the mouth by a huge shark. However, he soon discovered that the behemoth had no teeth.
Now he was even more desperate! Because the sea monster that swallowed itself had no teeth, it meant that it could only be the largest animal on the planet, the whale!
The thought of being swallowed in the mouth by a whale and soon about to be swallowed into his stomach and suffocated, and then broken down by stomach acid, Michael burst into tears, and he would never see his parents, wife and children at home again.
However, at this moment, a strong light suddenly flashed in front of Michael's eyes, and the world became bright!
It turned out that the humpback whale had somehow opened its jaw after swallowing Michael into its mouth, and Michael took advantage of the situation to swim upstream, and finally returned to the surface of the sea unscathed.
However, Michael was so frightened that he returned to the shore and immediately went to the hospital for a comprehensive physical examination. The doctor examined him and told him that his body was not in serious trouble.
Michael's escape from the whale's mouth seems to have seriously shaken the whale's status. As the overlord of the three realms of Shanghai, Land and Air on the earth, he actually let an unknown human escape from the palm of his hand, what happened to the whale, is it difficult to make his combat effectiveness weaker?
Humpback whales are close relatives of baleen whales, large and bloated, with an average body length of 12.9 meters for male humpback whales and 13.7 meters for females, with a recorded maximum of 18 meters. Adult humpback whales weigh between 25 and 40 tons. Humpback whales have relatively small heads, large snouts and large beaks, and twenty or thirty tumor-like protrusions around their mouths. Interestingly, a hair grows on top of each protrusion, while the rest of the body is hairless at all.
The back of the humpback whale is not as straight as other cetaceans, but it arches upwards to form a beautiful curve, hence the name "humpback whale", also called "humpback whale" and "humpback whale".
Humpback whales are able to make complex calls that sound like they are singing. The ratio of percussion to pure tone in its singing is very similar to the ratio of both in Western symphonies. The researchers found that humpback whales were able to make at least 7 octaves, but instead of barking out of order, they sang according to a certain beat, scale length, and musical phrases.
Humpback whales migrate 25,000 kilometers a year, but they never get lost, and the migration route is almost straight, with a yaw angle of less than 1 degree. Scientists have found that humpback whales may have made a combination of celestial bodies such as the sun, moon and stars to provide accurate navigation for themselves.
Humpback whales open their mouths very widely when preying, and their special elastic ligaments can temporarily shed their lower palate, forming an angle of more than 90 degrees, and then rush sideways or on their backs towards the shrimp swarm. The humpback whale's open mouth can reach a diameter of up to 4.5 meters, allowing it to swallow huge amounts of krill and small fish in one bite.
After swallowing the fish and shrimp into the mouth, the humpback whale does not chew because it has no traditional teeth and can bite and chew its prey. The humpback whale's "teeth" are actually whiskers arranged in the shape of comb teeth, like a toothbrush, which can only filter out the seawater in the mouth and then leave the fish and shrimp behind.
The remaining fish and shrimp will be swallowed directly by the humpback whale and swallowed into the stomach. At this point, humpback whales are exposed to a congenital defect: the diameter of the throat is too narrow to swallow larger prey.
Having neither teeth nor swallowing large prey, this is the main reason michael's whale mouth escape. In fact, there has been only one recorded incident in which humans have been swallowed by whales.
Slightly larger fish are not on the humpback whale's food list. Humpback whales' favorite food is krill, which are less than 1 cm long. In addition, scaly fish, scaly fish, jade tendon fish and other small fish are also its delicacies.
Since they do not eat for months during the winter, humpback whales eat wildly throughout the summer to maintain the physical strength needed for their large bodies. In order to catch enough fish and shrimp, humpback whales have even evolved fishing methods similar to those of humans.
It swims upwards in a spiraling position from the bottom of the sea and spits out many bubbles of varying sizes, causing the last bubble to rise to the surface of the water at the same time as the first bubble to form a huge web of bubbles. This net encircles the prey tightly, and then the humpback whale quickly moves closer to the center of the bubble net, opening its mouth to swallow the prey in the net.
In addition to being a sworn enemy with killer whales, humpback whales are more docile on the whole, and when they encounter humans in the ocean, they never actively attack humans, and people often see humpback whales on the coast. The encounter of the British man Michael is probably because he ordered too much and was mistakenly eaten by humpback whales as delicious food.