This movie looks genuinely stupid.
No, a person can’t be swallowed by a sperm whale (strike #1) and no, a person is not going to survive for an hour in the whale’s guts (strike #2). A very large sperm whale is the only whale with a gullet wide enough to swallow an object the size of a person, but not one wearing all the gear involved in scuba diving, and especially not since the whale is adapted to consume soft squishy prey. Furthermore, the gut isn’t just a passive volume — the victim is going to be mashed and squished by the muscular walls.
ScienceNews tries to break the news gently.
But no one has ever observed this process in sperm whales. And researchers aren’t sure sperm whales actually swallow prey whole. When these elusive giants do surface with squid, it’s either with “literal chunks hanging out of their mouths or chunks floating behind them,” Gero says.
Swallowing people is also not in sperm whales’ nature, Reidenberg says. It makes for a thrilling movie night, but “these whales are very gentle when they’re around people who are not bothering them.” So while physiologically possible, their behavior and taste for deep-sea creatures make the events “very, very unlikely.”
You’re also not likely to get hoovered up by a sperm whale by accident. These whales can dive more than two kilometers deep in search of a meal — far deeper than human divers can reach, Gero says.
Popular Science consulted the same whale biologist
.
“More than likely, the human drowns the second they get smashed into the mouth of the whale, whether they were drawn in by a squid or accidentally brought into the mouth of a whale,” he says. “My guess is the person dies the second they enter the mouth.”
Gero raises another interesting possibility. Sperm whales usually prey on boneless squid, so consuming a scuba-outfitted human could be a choking hazard, and could choke to death.
This would certainly make for a shorter movie, but Gero notes that the whale’s body could also have a more lively response to an unwanted foreign object in its mouth.
“When I swallow something that I shouldn’t have, it’s like a non-controllable response — your body just starts moving its mouth and coughing,” Gero says. “In that sort of movement, or freakout, it probably is going to do a lot of physical damage to the human.”
Although Gero acknowledges that he is not a whale anatomist, he still believes that it would be highly unlikely for any living creature to make it into the stomach of a sperm whale, let alone set up camp there.
“There are acids and gases,” he says. “The digestive tract of any mammal is not meant to be a livable place for any prey that ends up there.”
So, yeah, it’s a ridiculous movie with a bad premise.
But you know who is thrilled by it? Ken Ham.
Could Jonah have survived three days and three nights inside the belly of a great fish?
Well, I think more people will be asking that question next month after a new survival thriller movie, Whalefall, hits the box office. This movie is based off a 2023 novel of the same name by author Daniel Kraus, and the premise is basically this: A young man diving in the Pacific Ocean is accidentally swallowed by a hunting sperm whale. He only has one hour’s worth of oxygen left and must find a way to escape the belly of the beast.
Of course, such a story immediately reminds viewers of the biblical account of Jonah—and the author apparently intended that. In an interview he said,
The impetus for the book was that I wanted to treat the Biblical Jonah story with scientific and biological accuracy. I talked with whale experts as I developed the plot, and they would listen to my ideas and say, “You know, that is theoretically possible.” So, that’s why it’s believable: We got the science right.
No, he didn’t get the science right. He talked to experts and cherry-picked the most charitable, tentative statements they made, and scurried off to write a stupid story that would sell, being especially attractive to brain-dead Christians, like Ken Ham. And now we’re going to have to deal with apologists who will claim it’s possible because they saw it in a movie.
Ham did say one honest, revealing thing.
Just as there is no fully naturalistic explanation for how Jonah could have survived such an ordeal, there’s no naturalistic explanation for how Jesus could be crucified, die, be buried in a tomb, and then three days later walk out of that tomb alive. It was a miraculous event that was only possible because God is omnipotent and nothing is impossible for Him.
The story makes no sense, there is no naturalistic explanation, but he’s going to believe it because god said so, and it was a miracle. Who needs a reasonable, factual explanation when you’ve got the whims of a god to back you up?
That’s not even what whalefall means.
@PZ #1
Right. Isn’t whalefall when one dies and sinks to the bottom and becomes an ecosystem of scavengers?
I just watched the trailer. Holy crap that’s probably the dumbest thing I’ve seen since Sharknado.
I object! Tripe can be delicious.
Yes. It might have been believable if it had been about a whale that choked to death, sank to the sea bottom, and became host to a whole community of creatures. Make the whole movie about hagfish.
@ ^ submoron : So can a whalefall if you are a shark or deep sea scavenger, well I presume so anyhow! Never heard of one complaiing about the taste anyhow.
@ drksky : Yes. Wikibasics :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_fall
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I happen to know because she was here in Adelaide for a public lecture or two recently that cetacean expert Joy Reidenberg of Inside Nature’s Giants
See : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joy_Reidenberg
Plus National Geographic – Animal Autopsy – Whale (47 mins so presuming full episode – nope haven’t watched it all yet myself
@ ^ submoron : So can a whalefall if you are a shark or deep sea scavenger, well I presume so anyhow! Never heard of one complaiing about the taste anyhow.
@ drksky : Yes. Wikibasics :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_fall
.***
I happen to know because she was here in Adelaide for a public lecture or two recently that cetacean expert Joy Reidenberg of Inside Nature’s Giants
See : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joy_Reidenberg
Plus National Geographic – Animal Autopsy – Whale (47 mins so presuming full episode – nope haven’t watched it all yet myself
was consulted on the science for Whalefall too FWIW.
Dóh! Apologies for my accidental double post. FTB site is being really slow and struggling to load & work for me today or maybe its my old computer? Either way, not what I’d intended. Mea culpa.
.***
Just seen so responding to #5 PZ Myers :
Ah but who would play the lead hagfish role and can you imagine what the method acting and staying in chaacter for that would involve?
The whole Jonah thing is just ridiculous on its own (and so is Pinocchio’s Monstro). The largest whale in the Med (which would be the largest whale anybody ever knew about in those days, barring legends passed on from those who first dared to go out into the Atlantic (and turned around REAL fast because of how rough the seas are for their types of boats), was only 22 meters long. Highly unlikely the stomach nor the lungs could ever fit a person.
@ ^ acroyear :Not once they’ve been chewed up quite a bit! ;-)
StevoR: Restraint. You don’t need to make every comment in a thread. Slow down and stop dominating the discussion.
I had the trailer for this pop up on YouTube several months ago. Age hasn’t improved my impression of it. But at least it’s not yet another film in a franchise that needs to be retired. It’s probably going to do well in markets that don’t have a bunch of American culture tropes floating around that viewers need to understand what’s going on. “Big creature swallows guy” isn’t hard to explain to a Beijing audience.
Robert F. Kennedy jr.
He would just be playing himself.
The thing that annoys me most about this film is that the protagonist is scuba diving by themselves.
That is the very first thing every scuba instructor who’s even the slightest bit competent will tell you to never, under any circumstance do. That’s how you die: something goes wrong and you have no one else around to help you during the emergency.
So my headcanon for this film is that it’s all a hallucination caused by a lack of oxygen due to a malfunction in his tank while he’s drowning.
The impetus for the book was that I wanted to treat the Biblical Jonah story with scientific and biological accuracy.
Horsemuffins. “The impetus for the book” was that he needed an idea and all he could get was the Jonah story, which he then adapted to sell copies, and possibly movie tickets too; hoping that at least the Bible-Belt crowd would turn out for it. Just like the “Omen” movies really. (Also, these are the kind of audience who still call whales “fish,” so they’re really not gonna care about “scientific and biological accuracy.”)
And “hey, at least it’s not about sharks” isn’t much of an excuse here.
@microraptor #14
See also: 127 Hours
The Martian?
StevoR @ # 8: Ah but who would play the lead hagfish role …?
Larry Hagman, of course.
Regarding “It’s true because I saw it in a movie”, ask if they have vegetables.
“Veggie Tales” tells them that vegetables are sentient Christians.
“Sausage Party” tells them that vegetables are sentient, and live to see their lives end in terror.
Then again, Whalefall seems to be targeting the same level of deep thinking and intellect as Moonfall, so that strategy likely wouldn’t work.
“but he’s going to believe it because god said so, and it was a miracle.”
Ham’s understanding is even worse than that. God didn’t tell him any of this nonsense, someone told him that there was a powerful ‘person’ named ‘God’ who made such a claim. No evidence for ‘God’ was provided, no evidence that ‘God’ ever made such a claim was provided. And Ham fell for that nonsense.
StevoR @6:
It was good IIRC. A series called “Inside Nature’s Giants” with Joy Reidenberg. NatGeo’s involvement added a little unnecessary CGI. And Dawkins was spliced in as a talking head briefly in each (I think he wasted a little time reading the Bible in the whale one).
This playlist has Dromedary camel, Race horse, Sperm whale, Lion & Tiger, Hippo. There were 18 episodes. Huh, there was another season I hadn’t seen.
A Kaiju film in 1972 had kids using a mini-submarine to get inside Gamera and remove a poisoned thorn from the antagonist monster, thus reviving the ‘good’ kaiju and saving Japan.
Considering that Gamera was a giant turtle with jet propulsion this was not the most jarring aspect of biology.
HidariMak @ 18
Please do not mention “Moonfall”.
It was a bad film based on a bad book by an otherwise decent SF author.
Thinking about it gives me migraine
I always wonder why they go to such lengths to come up with pseudo-scientific explanations for things that are supposed to be miracles to begin with.
The Marvels – Stop running, and let the flerkens eat you (1:04)
@HidariMak The veggies from Veggietales aren’t Christian, because they do not have a redemptive relationship with Jesus Christ. They believe Christ died for humanity’s sins, not those of vegetables. That’s why they say things like “God made you [not us] special and he loves you [not us] very much,” and do not pray unless they are portraying a character.
I dunno, looks like it could be fun to me. So long as it doesn’t take itself too seriously. Couldn’t be stupider than
Lee Strobel showed us this is a winning formula. Christian audiences have endless money for this slop.
indianajones @26: “So long as it doesn’t take itself too seriously.”
Here’s a redditor summarizing the book.
I snipped grueling survival stuff and ruminations grieving his abusive dad. A tearjerker from the chatter.
Survival stuff? Nonsense.
I can do better links and quotations:
https://beta.thestorygraph.com/book_reviews/61b3080f-f37d-4a0f-a882-de71d8bf409c?sort=lowest_rated&page=4
I dunno. I can’t say I would totally poo poo a ridiculous movie. I kept wondering why people would watch crap like Sharknado while watching crap like Sharknado. Lettuce hair guy from 90120 show chainsaws his way out of a tornado shark. Am I right?
Ok yeah Whalefall takes itself far more seriously than that. Meh! Not in a hurry to see it. Seems kinda dumb I suppose.
birgerjohansson @ # 22: … based on a bad book by an otherwise decent SF author.
Snooping around, I found three works of fiction with the title Moonfall: two fantasy series (uh, “serieses”?) by James Rollins and Sarah A. Parker, and a standalone novel by Jack McDevitt.
I dunno nothing about Parker, but the description of her story as “romantasy” does not compel me to find out more. I’ve read one Rollins, and might consider another if in the mood for a shallow “thriller”. After a few McDevitt books, I got pissed off at him publishing two with virtually the same plot, including identical climactic-rescue episodes, but might possibly some day give him another try because he’s had at least two Nebula nominations.
However, the Wiki piece on the movie describes the McD novel as “unrelated”, and says nothing about anybody’s book as a basis. Per Wiki, the film was written by its director & co-producer, the other co-producer, and a third man with no other function mentioned.
So please clarify – who’s the “otherwise decent SF author”?
The new Shaun the Sheep movie looks far more intellectual than Whalefall.
There seems to something of a Fall thing going om here. First we had the James Bond movie Skyfall, then we had Moonfall, now there’s Whalefall. I’m hoping that come November we get Trumpfall or MAGAfall. Then maybe politics here won’t be quite so awefall,
There have actually been two historically attested accounts of men who survived being in the mouth of a sperm whale, although it didn’t swallow them. (The headline is misleading): https://www.capecodtimes.com/story/news/2021/06/16/man-swallowed-whale-cape-cod-provincetown-harbor-peleg-nye-new-bedford-whaling-museum-log/7704006002/
Captain Peleg was one of the owners of the Pequod so apparently this story inspired Melville.
@33 seversky
At this time of year it’s time for Fallfall