Yes. In fact, before the exclamation point ![orig] there are two space characters. What appears to be happening in the table cell (in HTML) for my browser (Firefox 78.8) is that the browser is wrapping after the second space character, putting the blue monkey on the second line in that particular cell, so it appears to bounce down.
This particular behavior is in no way hindering me: as noted, I just remove white space now. I do, DO, appreciate the care and attention you are giving this for the general Markdown user - who shouldn’t really need to fiddle with things like white space around images. Take care!