A shocking clip of a humpback whale swallowing then spitting out a kayaker has gone viral online.
Dell Simancas and his son Adrian were on a trekking and packrafting trip in Chile when the outlandish encounter with the humpback whale happened.
The extraordinary video shows the father and son paddling in the icy waters before the whale suddenly appears to swallow Adrian, 24, in one go.
Both he and his raft disappear from view for several seconds in the clip, before they’re seen bobbing back to the surface.
Adrian’s dad calls to his son and repeatedly tells him to “relax” and “hold onto” his raft. He tells his son: “I’m coming.”
Meanwhile, Adrian cutches his upturned raft and grabs hold of his dad’s canoe as the pair make their way back to shore.
The peculiar encounter took place in the Strait of Magellan in southern Chile at around 3pm on Saturday.
Following the ordeal Dell, a Venezuelan anaesthesiologist, said: “I heard a loud sound and when I turned around, my son had already vanished.”
The 49-year-old added: “Fortunately, Adrian quickly returned to the surface and although he was in shock, he did not suffer any serious injuries.”
Adrian, a young programmer and musician, added: “I didn’t understand what was happening. I thought it had eaten me. It’s a tale that seems like fiction. But I lived to tell it.”
He also gave thanks his father for being calm and giving him clear instructions.
Adrian told the BBC: “I was really afraid that something would happen to my dad too, that we wouldn’t have reached the shore in time and that we would get hyperthermia.
“But when I got out, I understood that of course it was probably out of curiosity that the whale approached me, or maybe trying to communicate something.”
The incident has led many people saying the same thing online as they compared him to the prophet Jonah.
Jonah and the Whale from the Old Testament begins with Jonah been told by God that he must go to Nineveh and tell the people living there to lead better lives or God will punish them.
However, Jonah doesn’t want to do God’s work so he jumps aboard a ship going in the opposite direction. God then sends a great storm and the sailors throw Jonah overboard. After this, he is promptly swallowed by the whale.
Jonah spends three days in the whale’s stomach praying to God for forgiveness. When he’s finally released by a fishy burp, he goes straight to Nineveh and delivers God’s message.
One person wrote online: “The prophet Jonah was swallowed by a whale…” While another added: “Jonah true then!” A third chimed in: “Hi Jonah,” while a fourth simple wrote: “Jonah Jonah Jonah!”
Many also noted humpback whales’ empathetic nature, as one person said: “Humpbacks have more empathy and emotions than humans. That whale would have felt so bad after that.” While another branded it a “gentle giant”.
Animals Asia agrees, stating on its website: “Humpback whales are one of the few known species to possess spindle cells in their brains. These are linked with feeling empathy and intuition about others’ feelings.
“This means that humpback whales can understand and feel for another whale in distress. In fact, the limbic system (which is responsible for processing emotions) in some whale species, is more complicated than it is in our human brains.”
It adds “These spindle neurons are also associated with other advanced abilities, such as memory, reasoning, communication, problem-solving, and perception.”