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  • 2022-08-01 (xsd:date)
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  • Is the 'Humpback Whale Swallows Two Girls in California' Video Real? (en)
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  • On Aug. 1, 2022, readers inquired about the legitimacy of a video on Facebook that claimed to show a humpback whale swallowing two women who were kayaking in California. The post began with the words, A humpback whale swallows two girls in California, and continued as follows: While the video on Facebook was real, the whale did not swallow the two women into its gut. At the end of the caption of the video, it said that the pair of women were spit out after a few seconds. (After the Facebook post with the video went viral, this same claim was subsequently made elsewhere on TikTok and YouTube.) The video was originally posted on Nov. 2, 2020, the same day the incident occurred. The setting was Avila Beach, California, which is located along the coast around halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco: We also found this alternate angle of the same moment with the whale and two women: On Nov. 3, CNN reported that the two women, Julie McSorley and Liz Cottriel, managed to escape unscathed, briefly going underwater after capsizing before reemerging: This reporting from CNN appeared to indicate that the two whale watchers were perhaps never inside the mouth of the animal. However, McSorley reached out to us directly by email after this story was published. She said, From what I initially felt, when I saw the video I thought it must be an optical illusion that we were in the whale’s mouth, but after seeing the other video from the back and the video we had around our neck, as well as the still photos, it is clearly apparent we were in the whales mouth fully as he entered the ocean. In sum, the popular video on Facebook that showed a humpback whale having a close encounter with two women in California was real. They weren't swallowed and eaten, despite what the first line of the post said. Note: We previously reported on this same video after another viral social media post also showed a misleading caption that claimed, Yo a whale really ate this lady. (en)
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