Warning: You might want to stop eating before you watch/read on.
If you’ve ever tried (and subsequently failed at) beatboxing, you’ll know that the sounds some people are able to produce using only their mouth are pretty damn impressive.
Well now you can be reassured that whatever is going on with their vocal chords is probably something you don’t want happening to yours.
That is after professional Australian beatboxer Tom Thum and laryngeal surgeon Dr Matthew Broadhurst teamed up to create a “horrifyingly graphic” video that will make some people “spew in their laps”, according to Thum.
And he’s not wrong.
The pair decided to create the exploratory film at the Queensland Voice Centre to look at the inner workings of the throat tissue, voice box and larynx.
Thum said: “I wanted to find out how my larynx functioned when beatboxing compared to how it functions normally with speech, and whether or not there were any abnormalities in my laryngeal anatomy.
“I also had very little idea of what the inside of my throat and all my noise producing mechanisms actually looked like.”
Using two cameras, one in Thum’s nose and one in his mouth, the video – which is the first episode in a series - shows how the ENT structures interact to produce sound.
“I never thought that the structures that have given me the power of speech and sound for all these years would look like something resembling the Predator’s vagina,” said Thum.
Well quite.