We recently posted about Michael Packard, a Cape Cod diver, who found himself scooped up inside the mouth of a humpback whale. Most of the media reports used the term “swallowed” by the whale. If the word “swallow” is defined as “cause or allow something to pass down the throat,” the description is impossible. A humpback’s esophagus is only about 4 to 5″ in diameter, far too small to swallow a diver, especially one wearing a SCUBA tank. As one might expect, Mr. Pollard was promptly spat out by the whale, fortunately with minor injuries.

Perhaps ironically, some of the largest whales are filter feeders which feed on krill, plankton, and small fish. They have throats too small to swallow a human. Toothed whales are a different story. Sperm whales, the third-largest whale species, are toothed and prey on giant squid. Some sperm whales have an esophagus several feet in diameter, large enough to swallow a squid or a human whole.

Indeed, there is the story of James Bartley, who in the late nineteenth-century on a whaling expedition off the Falkland Islands, was said to have been swallowed by a sperm whale and was found to be still alive days later in the stomach of the whale.

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