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Man accidentally swallows AirPod, AirPod keeps on rocking

By
Andrew Cornett

Apple’s AirPods might be a bit durable than we previously thought. In fact, it turns out they can reportedly withstand a full trip through the human gastrointestinal tract with battery to spare.

Ben Hsu, a big Apple fan, claimed he fell asleep with his AirPods in his ears and woke up with one missing, according to the Daily Mail.

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Wondering where his headphone went, Hsu used the Find My AirPods feature that’s offered with the headphones, only to discover that the beeping sound the lost headphone makes was coming from inside himself.

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You read that right: AirPods don’t have any official waterproofing or IP dust rating, but it appears they can withstand an extended dip in stomach acid.

As one does when one swallows a foreign object, Hsu went to the hospital to get an X-ray, where doctors told him that they believed the AirPod would emerge from the other end of his gastrointestinal tract without the need for surgery.

Here’s the kicker: When Hsu finally got his AirPod back, it still worked as normal.

“The battery was still at 41 percent! It was incredible,” he told the Daily Mail, even going so far as to label his experience, “magical.”

We’re not sure that Apple would like to advertise that its headphones are gastrointestinal-rated, but we have to admit it’s pretty impressive the headphone would survive the intestinal, er, journey and still work.

We applaud the test, but be rest assured that Digital Trends will not be adding it to the list of hurdles we put headphones through on our testing docket.

If you’re one of Hsu’s friends, we highly recommend you never borrow either one of his AirPods as, well, we all know where one of them has been.

Another word of advice: If you plan on taking a nap with your headphones in, you might want to find a better way to secure them to your ears (see the rather extreme example in the photo above), so as not to repeat this little experiment. Then again, it seems like it would be hard to swallow one of Apple’s plastic in-ears without realizing it.

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Parker Hall
Parker Hall
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Parker Hall is a writer and musician from Portland, OR. He is a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Oberlin…
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