Adrián had started to think how he might survive inside the humpback whale “like Pinocchio” — then the creature spat him back out…
— from a story by Andrea Díaz & Ayelén Oliva on BBC.com, February 14, 2025.
Just in time to take our minds off the miserable state of the world, Adrián Simancas was swallowed by a whale off the coast of Chile, and his father captured the ordeal on video.
In case you haven’t seen the video, the scene is set in the often-dangerous Straits of Magellan, some of the world’s most dire straits :
It’s fairly unusual to be swallowed by a whale and live to tell the tale. But it happens now and then.
Technically, the young man wasn’t “swallowed”, because that word implies a trip down someone’s throat. The throat opening of a humpback whale is only about 4 inches in diameter, a fine size for swallowing shrimp and sardines but far too small to accommodate a young man and his kayak.
Adrián Simancas spent a few moments inside the whale’s mouth, but we can’t accurately say he was “swallowed”… even if media reports (like this one) make inaccurate use of the term.
In the Disney movie, Pinnochio and Geppetto were actually swallowed by an enormous whale who went by the name ‘Monstro”. First, Geppetto and his raft were swallowed, and then some time later, Pinnochio was swallowed by the same whale. A happy coincidence, though unlikely in real life.
While Geppetto waited inside the whale, he somehow avoided being digested. Apparently, the enormous whale had a rather unique digestive system that involved a cavernous chamber that was, for some reason, fairly well-lit.
Geppetto managed to catch a few fish.
Some time later, Pinnochio went searching for Geppetto, and found himself swimming with a school of tuna, and got swallowed into the belly of the whale, to be reunited with his father. (Not his biological father, but at least his conceptual father.)
Pinnochio talked Geppetto into making a smokey fire inside the whale’s belly, which caused Monstro to sneeze and thus bring about Pinnochio and Geppetto’s narrow escape.
Presumably, this whale was similar to the “big fish” that swallowed Jonah, in the Old Testament. Jonah also avoided any digestive activities inside the whale.
Like Pinnochio, Jonah had been a bad boy.
Whereas Pinnochio had run off to Pleasure Island to smoke cigars and play pool with a group of juvenile delinquents, Jonah had been commanded by God to go to the city of Nineveh and prophesy against it “for their great wickedness”. Instead, Jonah boarded a ship bound for Tarshish and nearly caused a shipwreck. God whipped up an extraordinary storm, and when the sailors determined that Jonah was the cause, they tossed him overboard, thus saving the ship and causing Jonah to be swallowed by Monstro or a similar piscine creature.
Jonah remained in the creature’s belly for three days and three nights, while avoiding any digestive activities. Much of those three days were spent praying for mercy, and promising to fulfill his duties as a prophet. No fire was necessary; God commanded the whale to vomit Jonah out.
So, as mentioned, people do occasionally get swallowed by whales and live to tell the tale. Generally, following their escape, they resolve to be better people, as was the case with Pinnochio and Jonah.
In Jonah’s case, he went on to warn the inhabitants of Nineveh about their coming destruction, and the entire community repented, and was spared.
In Pinnochio’s case, he died while saving Geppetto, but was resurrected by the Blue Fairy and made into a real boy.
Surviving a potential disaster can change your life.
From the BBC interview with Adrián Simancas:
“I felt a slimy texture brush my face,” he recalled, adding that all he could see was dark blue and white.
“I wondered what I could do if it had swallowed me since I could no longer fight to stop it,” he said.
Adrián told the reporter he felt he’d received a “second chance” when the whale spat him out.
His unusual experience, in one of the most extreme places on Earth, “invited me to reflect on what I could have done better up until that point, and on the ways I can take advantage of the experience and appreciate it as well.”
I could name a few people who would benefit from being spit out by a whale.