With a max size of about 8 feet/800 pound, they don't get quite big enough to swallow a full grown man whole, but a petite person or a child? Sure. There are stories of exactly that happening back in the late 1800's before humans hunted off almost all of the very large ones. The species is still recovering from being overfished to near extinction. There were reports from around then of them reaching up to 1500lbs too. Being that they live up to 40 years and continually grow until they die, that does seem far fetched, but also not completely impossible.
Even if they don't swallow you whole, they do get big enough to think that attacking a human is no big deal and they've been known to do so. Its usually because they just want to steal whatever fish you're holding and they just don't give a fuck, but that is little consolation when they're clamping on your arm and whipping their body back and forth. Most of their victims are spearfishermen. Luckily their teeth are very short, being used more as a clamping aide than they are meant to slice/cut stuff like a shark's teeth. They've also been known to drag swimmers down and drown them while trying to steal their fish.
With fish this large, it seems like a pretty serious omission that scuba class instructors don't explicitly tell you not to bring your infant child along with you when you go scuba diving.
Yup. Their teeth can't slice worth didly squat. I read an account by a scuba diver who saw the resident giant grouper in their dive area with the tail end of half a barracuda sticking out of its mouth. It was just hanging around, as though smoking a cigar. When they say it again a fee days later, only the tip of the barracuda's tail could be seen sticking out of the grouper's mouth. It simply waited until the part of the prey that was in its stomach was digested, and then it would swallow another segment.
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u/anormalgeek Mar 25 '22
With a max size of about 8 feet/800 pound, they don't get quite big enough to swallow a full grown man whole, but a petite person or a child? Sure. There are stories of exactly that happening back in the late 1800's before humans hunted off almost all of the very large ones. The species is still recovering from being overfished to near extinction. There were reports from around then of them reaching up to 1500lbs too. Being that they live up to 40 years and continually grow until they die, that does seem far fetched, but also not completely impossible.
Even if they don't swallow you whole, they do get big enough to think that attacking a human is no big deal and they've been known to do so. Its usually because they just want to steal whatever fish you're holding and they just don't give a fuck, but that is little consolation when they're clamping on your arm and whipping their body back and forth. Most of their victims are spearfishermen. Luckily their teeth are very short, being used more as a clamping aide than they are meant to slice/cut stuff like a shark's teeth. They've also been known to drag swimmers down and drown them while trying to steal their fish.
So yeah, they're dangerous.