Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Trevor Treharne, Doctoral Researcher, Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford

Each day, we’re confronted with headlines about death: millions lost to disease, disasters, overwork or unhealthy lifestyles. But much of this reporting doesn’t reflect reality – and it may be doing more harm than good.

Journalism is meant to help the public make sense of health risks. But the way media outlets report death often distorts our understanding of what’s actually killing people. Dramatic causes like terrorism, pandemics and natural disasters receive disproportionate attention, while chronic illnesses such as heart disease, kidney disease and stroke – the world’s biggest killers are underreported or ignored.

This matters. Public perceptions of risk shape everything from government health spending and research priorities to individual behaviour and policy responses.

A large body of research suggests that people consistently overestimate the risk of rare or sensational causes of death and underestimate common ones. A 2014 study found that people were far more likely to think of deaths from suicide, homicide, or air crashes than from stroke, diabetes or chronic respiratory disease — even though the latter are far more common.

These misperceptions closely mirror media coverage. A comparative content analysis of UK, US and Australian newspapers found that cancer, aviation accidents and violent crime were disproportionately represented, while leading causes of death like heart disease received relatively little attention.

Pandemics tend to dominate headlines, especially when early estimates or modelling studies are reported without context. One example is the widely shared claim that overwork causes 2.8 million deaths a year. The original report from the World Health Organization and International Labour Organization put the figure closer to 745,000 – a significant number, but one that became inflated as it was repeated across headlines and outlets.

Meanwhile, major killers such as kidney disease, lower respiratory infections, and hepatitis C barely register in news cycles.

This gap between coverage and reality – known as the perception gap – shapes how people think, feel and act. Research shows the public tends to panic over rare events while ignoring everyday risks. For instance, someone might worry about dying in a plane crash (an exceedingly rare event), while overlooking high blood pressure — which contributes to more than 8.5 million deaths each year.

Why the media gets death wrong

Journalists often focus on stories with novelty, controversy or emotional impact. Cancer and heart disease are common, but overwork or climate-related deaths feel more urgent or politically relevant. New research or modelling studies also tend to get picked up quickly, especially when they come with a striking number or bold claim.

Reporters frequently rely on press releases and preprints, which may present tentative findings as hard facts. Mortality statistics are also often shared without context. For example, an article might claim “high blood pressure causes 10 million deaths a year” – without explaining that this figure includes associated risks and overlaps with other conditions.

Another issue is how deaths are categorised. Especially among older adults, a single death may involve multiple conditions like diabetes, cardiovascular disease and respiratory illness. Media reports rarely account for these comorbidities, which means the same death might be counted under several causes across different articles further inflating the apparent death toll.

The result isn’t usually intentional misinformation – but the impact can still be deeply misleading.

What responsible reporting looks like

To improve public understanding and avoid unnecessary alarm, media outlets should adopt three core principles:

1. Provide context

Always relate a figure to the global picture. For instance, around 295,000 people drown each year – a tragic number, but just 0.5% of global deaths. Without this kind of framing, it’s easy for even modest risks to feel overwhelming.

2. Clarify cause v correlation

There’s a critical difference between saying “X causes Y” and “X is associated with Y.” For example, ice cream sales and sunburns tend to rise together – not because one causes the other, but because both are linked to summer weather. Precision in language matters: unless a direct causal link has been firmly established, it’s more accurate to describe a risk as “associated with” a particular outcome.

3. Avoid sensationalism

In a crowded news landscape, it’s tempting to chase clicks – but public trust relies on accuracy. Exaggeration undermines credibility, especially in health journalism.

What readers can do

It’s not just journalists who shape the narrative – readers do too. When you see a health statistic:

• ask whether it comes from a reputable source like the WHO, UN, or IHME

• check whether the figure is put in context or presented in isolation

• look for signs of double-counting, exaggeration or causal overreach

• be cautious with headlines that include words like “explosion,” “soar” or “epidemic” without numbers to back them up.

Death is a serious subject but our understanding of it shouldn’t be shaped by exaggeration. With better reporting and more critical reading, we can build a clearer picture of global health and respond to real risks, not just frightening headlines.

Trevor Treharne receives funding from the Oxford-McCall MacBain Graduate Scholarship.

Carl Heneghan holds grant funding from the NIHR and previously from the WHO for a series of ongoing Living rapid reviews on the modes of transmission of SARs-CoV-2 reference WHO registration 2020/1077093. He is an advisor to Collateral Global, the Sir James Mackenzie Institute for Early Diagnosis at St Andrew’s University, and the WHO’s International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP). He is a member of the Board of Preventing Overdiagnosis. He is also the co-director of the Global Centre for Healthcare and Urbanisation and a Board member of the Speed Trust.

– ref. What the media gets wrong about death – and how to fix it – https://theconversation.com/what-the-media-gets-wrong-about-death-and-how-to-fix-it-256830

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Dominic Bryan, Chair professor, Queen’s University Belfast

Flags – particularly the union flag and the St George’s Cross – continue to appear in towns and cities in England, at times in response to the housing of migrants and asylum seekers in the local area.

Groups such as Operation Raise the Colours, the Weoley Warriors, Flag Force UK, and the Wythall Flaggers have claimed responsibility for putting the flags up. In many places the flags seem to be in place for the foreseeable future. In Brighton and Hove the local council began to remove flags, only to be forced to leave some up when the contractors sent to take them down were abused.

Displays of flags on street furniture and buildings, such as pubs, are not unusual. But while they are common around the celebration of royal events and major sporting occasions, it is more exceptional to see them put up in reference to political issues. This appears more coercive as an action. There is a sense of territory being marked.

We’ve heard predictable claims that the flags are just a display of pride in a British or English identity. This is an easy claim to make as it clearly is, in part, to do with nationalistic pride. The point is that they are being hung in particular places, by particular groups of people and in a particular way that clearly links them to the ongoing debates and hostility to migration.

As any anthropologist would tell you, symbols are multi-vocal. They offer a range of meanings that depend on who is using them and the context in which they are being used. If the symbols are being used to send a message, the intended recipient of that message adds another layer of meaning.

The use of flags, in what political scientist Marc Howard Ross calls the symbolic landscape, carries significant cultural value – or what sociologist Pierre Bourdieu would have termed symbolic capital. They are displays of patriotism that are common in different forms, in nations around the world. They are used by nation states in rituals and public spaces, by the elite, by politicians and by companies selling their products. They’re waved at sports events and displayed as part of everyday, banal, practices. They are the stock and trade of how the nation is imagined and performed.

Anthropologists Thomas Hylland Eriksen and Richard Jenkins’s book Flag, Nation, Symbolism in Europe and America shows that the use of flags can vary quite widely. In Denmark, the national flag adorns birthday cakes. In Canada it is the essential addition to any large cottage around the lakes of Ontario. And in the US, one of the most flag obsessed countries, it is flown at sporting events big and small.

Flags in Northern Ireland

Generally the British are seen as being more reserved in their use of the Union flag, in part because of its complex relationship with Englishness, Irishness, Scottishness and Welshness. But in Northern Ireland, flags fly from lamp-posts nearly all year around. Union flags, the Ulster Banner (the former flag for the Northern Ireland government), and Scottish Saltires often fly alongside the paramilitary flags of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and the Ulster Defence Association (UDA).

Many of these are put up in the summer and, while some are taken down in September, others remain through winter, becoming tatty as the weather turns colder and wetter, and ultimately being replaced in the spring. Flags have long been put up to commemorate the Battle of the Boyne on July 12, but the commemorative season now includes the Battle of the Somme (July 1), local band parades in June and goes through to Ulster Day (September 28) and Remembrance Sunday in November.

Flags are put up predominantly by groups of men in working-class areas. The expansion of the practice seemed to date from around 2000 when a feud between the UVF and UDA flared up and each group used flags to demarcate the areas they controlled. This was predicated on the available of cheap, mass-produced nylon flags imported from Asia.

Irish Tricolours fly in Irish nationalist areas, but not with the same density or frequency. They, too, are sometimes used as signs of demarcation between different Republican groups. The Tricolour has also recently been put up on lamp-posts in Dublin by rightwing groups.

In Northern Ireland the practice has many detractors. Some feel the flag is being disrespected (particularly as the flags quickly become tatty and dirty) while others see their presence as part of a practice of coercive control by paramilitary groups. Others long for more shared public space without these symbols and some fear their presence might reduce the value of houses in the area.

There is in fact clear legislation in Northern Ireland making it unlawful for a flag to be affixed to a lamp-post. However the Department of Infrastructure, which has authority over the lamp-posts, steadfastly refuses to remove the majority of the thousands of flags. Despite the coercive control invoked and the displays of flags by organisations proscribed under terrorism laws, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) rarely intervenes.

A five-year, all-party Commission on Flags, Identity, Culture and Tradition (of which I was co-chair), published a report in 2021 concluding that “citizens do not have lawful authority to put up any flag on lamp posts or road signs” and calling for better coordination on the issue that should include local councils. But no new policies have developed.

Despite a dozen research and policy reports over more than two decades (including at least six with me as one of the authors) funded by British research organisations, the Northern Ireland government the Irish government and charities, the numbers of flags on lamp-posts remains in the tens of thousands.

Authorities find it difficult to decide how to handle flags in part because “policing” the use of the national flag looks unpatriotic. Nationalism and patriotism are so embedded within the discourses of nearly all of the major political parties that it’s impossible for politicians to tell the general public that they aren’t allowed to wrap themselves in the same symbols.

And so even if it is obvious the symbols are used as leverage in a racist or sectarian act of territory marking, those with authority are loathed to do anything about it.

Short of the legitimacy of “tradition” that is so powerful in Northern Ireland, the practice in England, Scotland, Wales or the rest of Ireland, might fade away. Or it might become embedded in a world of increased chauvinistic and xenophobic nationalism.

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This article contains references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and this may include links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something from bookshop.org The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

Dominic Bryan receives funding from the ESRC and I have received funding from the AHRC, the Government of Northern Ireland and the Irish Government in the past.

I am a member of the Green Party.

– ref. I’ve researched the politics of flags in Northern Ireland for decades – here’s what England needs to understand – https://theconversation.com/ive-researched-the-politics-of-flags-in-northern-ireland-for-decades-heres-what-england-needs-to-understand-264203

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Carolina Machado Oliveira, Filmmaker, Senior Lecturer in Factual, Bournemouth University

Deep in the Amazon, sound designer Eric Terena has been capturing the sounds of the rainforest while sitting silently beneath the dense, towering treetops with his recording equipment. He has noticed some huge changes.

“What the environment once spoke, what biodiversity once sang, has shifted to sounds from industrial projects that have arrived in our territories,” said Terena, co-founder of Mídia Indígena, a Brazilian media and communications network which promotes and preserves Indigenous cultures.

His words describe more than a change in sound – they show how nature is gradually being replaced by machines. Ancestral songs have been drowned out by industrial noise. Terena shares these changes using digital tools to bring local stories to global audiences, turning lived experience into climate knowledge.

In our research with Indigenous communities in the Brazilian Amazon, we examine how film and other media technologies, from smartphones to social platforms, are being used to document environmental change, defend land rights and influence climate debates. Together with Indigenous leaders and the Intercultural Faculty in Mato Grosso, Brazil, we explore how “educommunication” – which combines media education with active community participation – can build the technical skills and political capacity that young communicators need to tell their stories to different audiences, from local villagers to global leaders.

As Cop30, the UN climate summit, comes to Brazil this November, our research shows how these digital tools are enabling Indigenous voices to help reshape global understanding of the climate crisis – ensuring their perspectives are present not only in cultural storytelling, but in international environmental decision-making.

A pivotal shift

This shift didn’t happen overnight. It began with a few voices that grew into a movement. Terena co-founded Mídia Indígena in 2017 at the Free Land Camp, a yearly Indigenous rights gathering in Brasília. Alongside him, a group of young Guajajara leaders (Indigenous peoples from Maranhão, Brazil) launched the platform, training 128 young Indigenous people how to report, record and share their stories. Mídia Indígena has grown quickly – its videos now receive more than 10 million views each year.

At the heart of this work is a powerful idea: “Nothing about us, without us.” Indigenous people can now tell their own stories without relying on outsiders to speak for them. They decide what to film, how to tell a story, and who sees it.

The impact of this shift became clear during the Yanomami humanitarian crisis in early 2023. The Yanomami, one of the largest Indigenous groups in the Amazon, live across northern Brazil and southern Venezuela in territories deeply affected by illegal gold mining. That year, reports emerged of severe malnutrition, child deaths and mercury poisoning caused by mining operations contaminating rivers and destroying forest ecosystems.

Because Mídia Indígena’s reporters were already present in the territory, they were the first to document and publish evidence of the crisis. Their coverage not only exposed the immediate health emergency but also linked it to broader issues of environmental destruction and climate change. National and international outlets eventually followed with their own reports – but only after Indigenous journalists had already broken the story.

This was more than journalism; it was lived truth, rooted in a deep knowledge of the land. Mídia Indígena’s reporting had an authenticity that no outsider could match.

And they are not alone. Young communicators from Xingu+, a network from the Xingu River basin and surrounding Indigenous territories in Brazil, created a powerful video called Fire is burning the eyes of Xingu, showing illegal fires destroying parts of the Amazon. Their video caught the attention of the US Agency for International Development and the EU, emphasising how local stories can prompt global awareness.

Films by the Ijã Mytyli Manoki and Myki Cinema Collective, founded in 2020 by two neighbouring Indigenous peoples of Mato Grosso, show how traditional knowledge and rituals are being praised in Europe, even if they’re less known in Brazil. As filmmaker Renan Kisedjê said in the short film Our Grandparents Hunted Here, “we are digital warriors”. Where once bows and arrows defended the land, today cameras and smartphones continue the fight for land, rights and justice.

Challenging outdated ideas

Collectives such as Mídia Guarani are another part of this digital resistance. Their videos challenge outdated ideas about Indigenous life and show how deeply these communities are connected to both nature and technology.

But this storytelling is not only about identity – it’s about survival. These creators shine a light on urgent threat such as Brazil’s “devastation bill”, which seeks to weaken environmental safeguards by expanding environmental self-licensing and eroding protections for traditional territories. Such measures open the door to unchecked pollution and land grabs.

By reporting on dangers like this, Indigenous communicators seek to hold governments and corporations to account. Their stories do more than inform – they generate public pressure and demand change.

This shift matters internationally too. The UK has pledged £11.6 billion in climate finance between 2021 and 2026, including £3 billion for nature restoration and £1.5 billion for forests. Yet the Independent Commission for Aid Impact, an organisation that scrutinises UK aid spending, warns that changes in accounting may have “moved the goalposts”, inflating apparent spending without ensuring impact on the ground.

Much of this funding has traditionally flowed through large international charities and foundations, such as the Rainforest Foundation UK and the International Institute for Environment and Development, which work with Indigenous communities on mapping, monitoring, advocacy and sustainable policy.

Increasingly, however, Indigenous communities are speaking directly to funding donors and shaping allocations. This shift matters because they collectively manage vast areas of land critical to conservation. While many governments invest in expensive climate technologies, these communities have long protected ecosystems through practices proven over generations.

For the first time in the history of UN climate summits, large numbers of South American Indigenous people will attend Cop30 in November – both in person and online. For a long time, they’ve been building networks to fill the gap left by mainstream media. Now, these once silenced voices are loud, clear and deeply informed.

In late August, a hundred Indigenous reporters gathered in Belém for the 1st National Meeting of Indigenous Communication. Under the motto “Indigenous communication is resistance, territory and future”, they strengthened their networks and prepared collectively for COP30.

As the world’s most experienced environmental defenders gain more power in climate talks, their stories, and the way they tell them, will help shape the decisions that affect us all.

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The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The digital movement that enables Indigenous people to show for themselves how the Amazon region is changing – https://theconversation.com/the-digital-movement-that-enables-indigenous-people-to-show-for-themselves-how-the-amazon-region-is-changing-261616

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Rachael Jolley, International Affairs Editor, The Conversation

Republican political activist Charlie Kirk was killed as he spoke at a Utah Valley University event on September 10. Just three months earlier, Minnesotan House Democrat Melissa Hortman and her husband were shot and killed by a masked gunman.

According to a thinktank, the Institute of Strategic and International Studies, violence against those in US political life in the four years to 2024 was nearly triple the number of incidents in the previous 25 years combined.

Historically the killings of significant political figures has sometimes been the precursor to dramatic repression or further violence. The killing of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 led precipitously to the beginning of the first world war. The murder of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by a Jewish refugee was used as a pretext for the slaying of Jews in Berlin and the justification for unleashing a wave of violence and destruction across Nazi Germany in what became known as Kristallnacht.

There are, of course, alternative lessons from historic moments. When British MP Jo Cox was slain on the streets of Birstall, near Leeds, in 2016, politicians from across the divide condemned it. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and Conservative prime minister David Cameron visited the town where Cox was murdered together: a symbol of political unity against violence.

Violent speech

Political violence is defined by the United Nations as that which is intended to achieve political goals or intimidate opponents through the use of physical force or threats to influence a political outcome or silence dissent. Katie Pruszynski, who researches political violence at the University of Sheffield, finds that the use of polarising and extreme language in debate has stoked up something she calls “hyperpartisanship”, where opponents have become “enemies” and those with different worldviews have become “traitors”. This tension stokes distrust and radicalisation, she warns. So then, this fits within the framework of the US president’s immediate reaction. In a video published on X, Trump vowed to root out “the radical left” whose rhetoric is “directly responsible” for Kirk’s killing.

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Read more:
Charlie Kirk shooting: another grim milestone in America’s long and increasingly dangerous story of political violence

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Melissa Butcher, a professor emeritus at Royal Holloway, University of London, researches political polarisation, and its causes. She also spent time listening to Kirk’s speeches at the conservative rally AmericaFest in 2021.

As part of her work on the political and ideological divides in the US, Butcher has listened to conversations in all sorts of locations, from social clubs to shooting ranges and offices. Those discussions suggest a widespread feeling that community is breaking down. She has talked to Americans who believe that the promise of an affluent future is disappearing in the face of environmental collapse and successive financial crises.

Her research suggests that some Americans now see the world as scary and unsafe. And these emotions can provoke rage as well as despair. But more hopefully, she found, that many people want hope, safety and to live in a caring community.

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Read more:
Charlie Kirk was emblematic of a country polarised and imploding

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Religion and debate

To outsiders the significant role of religion in US politics can come as a shock. Quotes from the Bible regularly make an appearance in speeches and questions about church attendance are thrown at candidates. Gordon Lynch, a professor of religion at the University of Edinburgh, has studied Kirk’s leadership in the white Christian nationalist movement within the US.

For Christian nationalists, the idea of the separation of church and state acknowledges not having an official state church. But the complete separation of Christianity from public institutions is anathema and secular institutions such as public schools and universities are often regarded as hostile ground, says Lynch.

Lynch notes the role of Kirk’s organisation, Turning Point USA, in calling on students to name and shame professors who they judged to have problematic or socialist views, and creating a watchlist. But he also feels that a different part of Kirk’s legacy could be acknowledging the activist’s commitment to debate with, and listen to, those whose views he disagreed with. And this could be extremely valuable in the current climate, if stressed by Republican leaders.

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Read more:
Charlie Kirk: why the battle over his legacy will divide even his most ardent admirers

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On the borders of Europe, an emergency

Meanwhile, another crisis which needs the US president’s attention is unravelling on the other side of the Atlantic, on the Polish border with Russia. Putin’s drones ventured into Polish airspace and were shot down by Nato fighter jets. Many see this as Russian president, Vladimir Putin, testing the mettle of the Nato allies to find out the level of their response.

Poland immediately invoked article 4 of the Nato treaty. The alliance’s members met to discuss the threat and the UN security council are due to meet on September 12 about the incident. Stern words have been issued and troops dispatched to Nato’s eastern border. But Stefan Wolff from the University of Birmingham, believes that Putin will not be worried by the west’s response. As Wolff observes, the Russian leader will be buoyed by his military’s recent advances on the battlefield. He’ll also be basking in the warmth of recent talks with Xi Jinping of China, Narendra Modi of India and Kim Jong-un of North Korea. So Nato’s response is hardly likely to have him rattled.

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Read more:
Russian drones over Poland is a serious escalation – here’s why the west’s response won’t worry Putin

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Russia’s future plans to add more territory (not just areas that it currently controls within Ukraine) were laid out in detail by the University of Aberystwyth’s Jenny Mathers, who researches the war in Ukraine, this week. At a briefing given by Russia’s chief of the general staff, Valery Gerasimov, that has now come to light, a map was shown in the background suggesting Russia’s intention to claim the areas around Odesa and Mykolaiv along the coast of the Black Sea. These would give Moscow important economic and strategic control of sea routes but also potential to create a land corridor to Transnistria, a pro-Russia breakaway region within Moldova that seeks independence.

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Read more:
Russia has provided fresh evidence of its territorial ambitions in Ukraine

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The upcoming Moldovan election on September 28 must be recognised as another struggle to maintain European security in the face of Russian aggression, says Amy Eagleston, a political scientist at Leiden University. Eagleston points to Russian cyber interference in a past Moldovan election as evidence for worries about what could happen this time. She stresses Moldova’s strategic position as a support for Ukraine, under its current government. Things could change fast, she warns.

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Read more:
Why Moldova’s election is important for the whole of Europe

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Israel’s unprecedented strike

Another strike that shook the world this week was Israel’s unprecedented airstrike on the Qatari capital of Doha where Hamas officials were discussing a peace deal. This was the first time that Israel had directly attacked a Gulf state.

Scott Lucas, an international politics professor at University College Dublin and an expert on the Israel/Gaza crisis, argues that this showed the current Israeli government was not willing to engage in any kind of peace negotiation. It was, he said, clearly ready to level parts of Gaza City, kill Hamas’s leadership and completely break up the organisation. Lucas believes there will be no more talk of a ceasefire with Hamas, only capitulation.

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Read more:
Middle East leaders condemn Israel’s attack on Qatar as Netanyahu ends all talk of Gaza ceasefire – expert Q&A

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Long arm of the law?

In a week when international law was being tested to its outer limits, James Sweeney, a professor of law at Lancaster University, spoke up for its long-term relevance and his belief that it would outlast political careers.

History shows that leaders who once seemed untouchable have eventually faced justice in one form or another, said Sweeney, pointing to the Nuremberg trials of Nazis and how former Chilean leader Augusto Pinochet died awaiting trial for human rights abuses to house arrest. Pinochet may well have believed that would never happen to him. It did.

Something for today’s leaders to contemplate carefully.

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Read more:
International law isn’t dead. But the impunity seen in Gaza urgently needs to be addressed

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– ref. Charlie Kirk and the politics of rhetoric and division – https://theconversation.com/charlie-kirk-and-the-politics-of-rhetoric-and-division-265149

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Dai O’Brien, Associate Professor, BSL and Deaf Studies, York St John University

Deaf is a deeply emotional examination of what having a baby can mean for a mixed deaf and hearing couple. Spanish director Eva Libertad’s film explores where access, language and trying to keep a family together under the extreme pressure of new parenthood and social expectations come to a point.

Throughout the film, there is a clear divide in deaf and hearing spaces, and clear differences in how people are treated in each one. A key element of this is the thoughtful effort to facilitate communication by adapting to people’s different abilities.

At home, Ángela (played by deaf actor Miriam Garlo) and her partner Héctor (Álvaro Cervantes) communicate easily and comfortably in a mixture of sign and speech. Ángela’s experience in work is similar. While her work colleagues don’t sign fluently, they obviously value her and care about her and put effort into their communication and relationships. This care is reflected in the baby mobile they give Ángela, which has carefully moulded hands in different configurations so that Ángela’s language is represented in her baby’s toys.

Ángela is made to feel safe and valued at home and work thanks to the care and respect everyone shows to each other when communicating, whether in speech, sign or a mixture of both. The same is true of the deaf communities in which she and Héctor are involved – Héctor is embraced, teased, accepted and treated as an equal. But when their relationship encounters the hearing world, this all changes.

Despite Héctor’s efforts to help Ángela communicate with healthcare staff, the indifferent medical system and emotional strain take their toll on him.

The issue comes to a head when the gynaecologist demands that he stops interpreting and moves out of Ángela’s line of sight while Ángela is giving birth. This leaves her alone, scared and with her hands restrained by anonymous medical professionals whom she can’t understand.

This deeply traumatic experience of giving birth is something that is very common for deaf women, which makes it extremely uncomfortable to watch on screen. It’s an impossible decision that is forced on Héctor: does he insist on staying when the full power of the medical institution is drawn against him, possibly putting Ángela in further danger? Or does he acquiesce and leave his partner alone during this horribly traumatic ordeal?

It’s a choice that colours their relationship. It is also a taste of what is to come. Together, they will have to make similarly impossible compromises, which are forced upon them by the discriminatory institutions and attitudes that surround them and their own emotions and beliefs.

The separation of the environments in which Ángela feels able to exist as a mother becomes increasingly stark as the film progresses. Her lack of access to speech and the lack of accommodations offered to her are cruelly highlighted in several of the interactions she has with hearing people, resulting in her growing alienation and isolation from the other parents in her daughter Una’s nursery.

The speech- and hearing-centred expectations of the parent group and the nursery itself make her feel unable to be a competent mother in that environment. She is unable to join in with the simplest games and activities the nursery leader does with Una and the other children, as they are all based around sound.

While she is still embraced as herself by the deaf community, she finds it difficult to be a mother in those settings as well. She finds it difficult to integrate the compromises she is having to make at home with who she sees herself to be, and this is affecting every part of her life.

In their home, where previously Ángela and Héctor were able to build a haven of communication based on equality, the invasion of Ángela’s parents and Héctor’s friends, none of whom sign well, unbalances the status quo they have carefully constructed. This disrupts the linguistic care work they each do for the other to the point that their relationship creaks under the strain.

This film isn’t just about being deaf, although that is a huge part of Ángela’s life, and the heartbeat of the film. It will also resonate with those who have multilingual families. It highlights the compromises, the guilt, the heartbreak and the joy that raising kids in multilingual and multicultural contexts can bring, and the huge amount of emotional work that goes with that. It’s an important film, one that takes authenticity and representation seriously, and is one that anybody who works with deaf people at any stage of pregnancy and parenthood should watch.

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Dai O’Brien does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Deaf: a powerful film about the real struggles of deaf families navigating medical institutions and parenthood – https://theconversation.com/deaf-a-powerful-film-about-the-real-struggles-of-deaf-families-navigating-medical-institutions-and-parenthood-265013

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Renaud Foucart, Senior Lecturer in Economics, Lancaster University Management School, Lancaster University

Before resigning from his nine-month stint as French prime minister, François Bayrou had claimed that if France failed to cut its public deficit, young people would pay the price “for the sake of the comfort of boomers”.

This blunt assessment cut to the heart of France’s current economic reality. For behind the country’s growing budget deficit lies a story of generational unfairness. And those who created the problem are unlikely to pay for its solution.

The crux of that problem is that for decades now, the French government has spent much more than it earns. At the moment, it is borrowing around 6% of GDP a year. Over time, these borrowings have added up, so total public debt now stands at €3.3 trillion (£2.8 trillion), equivalent to 114% of GDP.

By contrast, the UK’s public debt is around 101% of GDP, and the EU average is 81%. (There are extreme cases like Japan, where the figure is 250%.)

As Bayrou made clear, the French deficit is mostly a boomer problem, as it has subsidised privileges for a very lucky generation. People born in the 1950s generally paid just a small proportion of their salaries to finance generous pensions, and voted to lower the pension age.

Spending on public pensions now makes up a quarter of France’s budget, with the average payment around €1,500 per month (£1,300, compared to around £1,000 in the UK). But 1.7% of French pensioners receive more than €4,500 per month, and a former senior executive could be receiving over €100,000 every year from the government.

This means that while public pensions in the UK cost around 5% of GDP, in France it is almost 14%. An early retirement age and longer life expectancy means that a French worker retiring now can expect to enjoy around 25 years of retirement, compared to 21 in the UK, or 20 in the US.

The economic impact of this situation is profound. On average, people currently retired in France end up with a pension pot containing double their own contribution – much more than future generations can hope to receive.

So on the whole, today’s French pensioners are doing pretty well.

For the time being the debt remains manageable. France currently borrows at a much cheaper rate than the 12% Portugal or Ireland had to pay during the eurozone crisis.

The trouble is that new debts racked up by France are becoming more expensive. As rating agencies re-evaluate French debt the cost is likely to increase further.

And like the proverbial frog in gradually boiling water, France may not realise that its ability to sustain its public finance is changing until it’s too late.

France v UK

The situation is different from the economic challenges facing the UK, which is experiencing increasing costs to finance its own debt, and is much more reliant than France on international investment.

France tends not to depend on investment and loans from the rest of the world as the UK does, and is able to borrow from French savers and the European Central Bank. It is also part of the eurozone, where that same bank is committed to doing “whatever it takes” to preserve the euro. This effectively protects member countries from foreign investors betting on their bankruptcy.

But just because France’s debts are different does not mean they do not to have to be managed. To be sustainable, public debt cannot be allowed to keep on rising as a share of GDP.

If it does, simply paying the interest of the debt becomes unaffordable. To avoid defaulting, France would then need to ask the help of the European Central Bank, and accept reforms imposed by other European countries, just like Greece and the Republic of Ireland had to cut benefits and raise taxes in exchange for bailouts during the Eurozone debt crisis.

And ultimately, there will be no solution to France’s financial problems without talking about – and changing – pensions. The current generational unfairness is so stark that subsequent governments use complex accounting tricks to try to deal with it.

Almost 10% of the schools budget, for example, is diverted to fill the gaps in the entire public sector pension system. But these kinds of loopholes will not be enough in the long term.

Eventually, freezing or lowering pensions and moving to a cheaper system will be unavoidable. Bayrou’s government fell as it tried to do this. It failed to build the necessary coalitions to govern such a divided country. But it may end up succeeding in delivering a message.

And that message is that France’s fiscal future depends on confronting the privileges of those who created the problem. The question is not whether this reckoning will come, but whether it arrives through political choice or economic necessity. The latter would be much more damaging for the younger generations of France.

Renaud Foucart does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The French economy has a boomer problem and is spending way too much on pensions – https://theconversation.com/the-french-economy-has-a-boomer-problem-and-is-spending-way-too-much-on-pensions-264912

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Christopher Gaffney, Senior Lecturer in Integrative Physiology, Lancaster University

Running has a huge number of benefits. The popular workout can prevent disease, improve mental health and even slow the biological ageing process.

But around 31% of us aren’t regularly doing enough physical activity – including going for a run. The most commonly cited barrier to exercise is a lack of time.

But what if all the benefits of running could be had but in a fraction of the time? This is where interval running comes in.

Interval running is a form of high-intensity interval training (HIIT). HIIT has been around for almost a century, but gained popularity throughout the 90s and 2000s thanks to workouts such as Tabata (20 seconds of intense exercise, ten seconds of rest) and CrossFit (a high-intensity workout that combines weightlifting, gymnastics and cardio).

The key aspect of HIIT is alternating between bursts of highly intense exercise followed by periods of rest or low-intensity exercise. For instance, during a regular HIIT workout you might perform 30 seconds of burpees at your maximum effort, before resting for 30 seconds. The move is then be repeated a few times.

HIIT principles can also easily be applied to your regular runs if you’re looking to reap the benefits of this workout but in a shorter time-frame.

For instance, with the “10-20-30 method”, runners start with 30 seconds of jogging or walking, followed by 20 seconds of running at a moderate pace – then finishing with a ten second sprint.

Or, the “fartlek” method (Swedish for “speed play”) is another easy way to get into interval running. This involves mixing in a few sprints during your jog instead of just keeping a steady pace.

The benefits of intervals

Interval running HIIT workouts can have numerous benefits – including for your cardiovascular system, your metabolism and your body composition (how much fat you have and where it’s stored).

For instance, research has shown that in overweight and obese people, sprints provided even greater gains in a specific aspect of cardiovascular fitness when compared with those who did a regular, steady pace run. The participants who performed sprints saw greater improvements in their V̇O₂ max – the amount of oxygen the body is able to use to fuel intense exercise.

In those who already run regularly, a 12-week trial found that adding HIIT workouts to a weekly endurance run for 12 weeks improved V̇O₂ peak to a greater extent than when they did longer continuous runs. V̇O₂ peak is a measure of cardiovascular fitness which shows your cardiovascular capacity. A bigger V̇O₂ peak is helpful for performance and also reduces the risk of death from any cause.

Research has also shown that interval walking and running has a more potent effect on your metabolic health – specifically the regulation of blood glucose levels, which can help lower risk of type 2 diabetes – than a continuous walk does.

HIIT workouts such as the 10-20-30 method have a greater effect on the energy-producing parts of our cells (known as the mitochondria) than continuous exercise. This means greater stamina and lower risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. The 10-20-30 method also has the benefit of reducing our “bad cholesterol” and blood pressure more than continuous running does. This means reduced risk of cardiovascular disease.

Finally, while both continuous running and HIIT can reduce visceral fat levels – the dangerous fat stored around our organs – HIIT can do this in a more time-efficient way.

In each of these instances, the benefits are accrued in a fraction of the time it would take with a conventional run. As little as 18 minutes of sprint interval runs three times a week can lead to health benefits.

How to get started

If you’re keen to give interval running a try, there are a few different ways you can get started.

If you normally run outdoors, you can try sprinting from one lamp post to the next – then recovering by walking or jogging to the next lamppost before sprinting again. This is a form of fartlek training.

In a gym setting, this can be done using both a non-motorised treadmill or a traditional motorised treadmill. The latter usually has interval training programmes that you can select – allowing for sprints then recovery. This can also be done with walking.

Sprints can be completed for just a few seconds to a couple of minutes. The key with interval running is to get your heart rate towards 90% of your maximum during the “intense” part to get the most benefits. Ensure you recover sufficiently between sprints.

Like with any exercise programme, it’s important to build up your activity levels over time.

If you’ve been sedentary for a few years, jumping immediately into interval running probably isn’t a good idea.

It’s also sensible to consult with your GP before starting new exercise regimes, particularly if you have any medical conditions. For instance, HIIT can actually increase blood sugar levels, resulting in hyperglycaemia in those with diabetes, so they should definitely speak to their doctor before giving this a try.

A good rule of thumb is try adding in a few sprints during your next run – be that for a few seconds to a minute. In two to three months, you’ll probably start to see the benefits.

Or, if you don’t care to try sprints, you could do the “10-20-30” method during your runs, or try “Jeffing” (the run a bit, walk a bit method).

Increasing the intensity even just a little bit occasionally during your runs can lead to numerous benefits for your health and fitness.

Christopher Gaffney receives funding from UKRI, NIHR, North West Cancer Research, and the Ministry of Defence.

– ref. How adding sprints to your usual jogs can boost the health benefits of running – https://theconversation.com/how-adding-sprints-to-your-usual-jogs-can-boost-the-health-benefits-of-running-263745

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Dan Baumgardt, Senior Lecturer, School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Bristol

Every so often, a completely random advert stops me in my tracks and makes me wonder what on earth went on in the room where it was created. For me, that moment came this past weekend, courtesy of a bubblegum-pink, cheerfully surreal advert for Pepto-Bismol.

Pepto-Bismol has been around since 1901, when it was first designed to ease the symptoms of cholera. Over the decades, it’s evolved into the familiar pink liquid we know today, promising to treat nausea, heartburn, indigestion and – as their jingle suggests – diarrhoea-ah!

Absurd advert? Definitely. But effective nonetheless, since it actually got me thinking about Pepto-Bismol for the first time in years. And, to its credit, the advertisers slipped in a piece of genuinely useful advice: that if your symptoms persist, see a doctor. That matters, because ongoing indigestion can be a sign of something more serious.

Understanding the upper gastrointestinal tract

In medicine, the gut is divided into two regions: upper and lower. The upper tract includes the mouth, pharynx, oesophagus (or gullet), stomach and the first section of the small intestine: the duodenum. Symptoms from these areas can point to a range of conditions.

One common cluster is dyspepsia: discomfort or pain often accompanied by bloating, burping, nausea and a feeling of fullness. Most of us will have experienced it at some point.

It can also involve reflux – the sensation of stomach contents coming back up – or waterbrash, a bitter taste from stomach acid hitting the back of the throat. Patients describe these in many ways: heartburn, acid reflux or “food that repeats on you”.

Pharmacies offer a wide range of remedies to treat indigestion. The familiar Pepto-Bismol is just one example. Alginates, such as Gaviscon, are medicines that contain seaweed-derived compounds which form a protective “raft” that floats on top of stomach contents, reducing reflux and preventing irritation of the stomach wall by acid. Chewable tablets like Rennies neutralise stomach acid. Even acid-reducing medications like omeprazole can be purchased over the counter. While these can ease symptoms, they can also delay diagnosis and treatment of potentially serious conditions if relied upon for long periods of time.

What causes indigestion?

After a rich or spicy meal or a stomach bug, some indigestion is expected – and might last a few days. Indigestion can also stem from benign conditions such as a hiatus hernia, where part of the stomach pushes through the diaphragm into the chest, making reflux more likely. This is common: it’s estimated that around a third of people over 50 may have one.

Other risk factors include coffee, alcohol, spicy or fatty foods, large portions, pregnancy, obesity and smoking. Some medications, including antidepressants, ibuprofen, anti-inflammatories and iron tablets, can also trigger symptoms.

However, persistent dyspepsia can sometimes be linked to more serious conditions. Inflammation of the oesophagus, stomach or duodenum has many causes, including infection with Helicobacter pylori a common bacteria that can live in the stomach lining and is a leading cause of ulcers. Antibiotics and omeprazole may be required to treat it. In some cases, this infection can progress to a peptic ulcer, which carries serious risks of bleeding or perforation of the gut.

More worryingly, indigestion can occasionally be a symptom of upper gastrointestinal cancers. In such cases, an endoscopy – a flexible camera that examines the upper gut – may be needed, with alternative tests available for those unable to tolerate the procedure.

Other internal cancers can also cause indigestion among other symptoms, including pancreatic and ovarian cancer. Even cardiac chest pain can mimic indigestion.

Symptoms can vary considerably between different conditions and different patients. This is why it’s important not to self-diagnose, and seek medical advice so a doctor can put the pieces together and make an appropriate plan of action.

When to worry

Guidelines from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) – an independent public body that provides national guidance and advice to improve health and social care in England – recommend urgent investigation with endoscopy for patients with a mass in the abdomen or who experience difficulty swallowing (dysphagia). Unexplained weight loss or upper abdominal pain alongside indigestion are also concerning, especially for patients in their 50s, where the risk of cancer is higher.

Investigation may also be considered for persistent indigestion, or that which doesn’t respond to treatment and in patients with iron-deficiency anaemia or a history of peptic ulcers. Family history is also relevant. Having two first-degree relatives (close family such as parents, siblings or children) with upper gastrointestinal cancer is another risk factor.

Acute gastrointestinal bleeding associated with cancer or an ulcer is an emergency. This can present as vomiting blood – either fresh red or looking like coffee-grounds. Some patients can pass blood mixed in their poo or black, tarry, foul-smelling stools. This “melaena” indicates digested blood. Here, immediate hospital care is essential.

Other warning signs include the presence of jaundice (yellowing of the skin), nausea and vomiting, altered bowel habits and tiredness. And since conditions like ischaemic heart disease (a narrowing of the heart’s blood vessels that can restrict blood flow and cause chest pain) may present like indigestion, vigilance is important for cardiac symptoms, especially in people with risk factors.

While advertising for Pepto-Bismol might spark a smile (or grimace), here’s the reality check: indigestion is common but not always harmless. Over-the-counter treatments can provide relief and many benign conditions often prove to be the underlying cause. But in some cases, persistent symptoms may signal a more serious underlying condition, including cancer.

So, if it’s a recurrent, persistent or severe problem, or you notice other worrying changes, skip a refill at the self-medication aisle. Make an appointment with your GP instead. Sometimes that pink bottle isn’t enough and catching problems early can make all the difference.

Dan Baumgardt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Indigestion is commonplace but sometimes concerning. Here’s what you need to know – https://theconversation.com/indigestion-is-commonplace-but-sometimes-concerning-heres-what-you-need-to-know-262982

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Ruth Emily Sylvester, Research Fellow in Water and Health Governance, University of Leeds

The raw sewage in England’s rivers and seas is not just a story of corporate failure. It’s also a legacy of Victorian sewers – impressive and high-tech in their day, but with inequality and exploitation baked in.

In the summer of 1858, London succumbed to a “Great Stink” as hot weather exacerbated the smell of human waste in and around the River Thames. Along parts of the Thames, sewage was piled six foot deep.

This compelled the Victorians to find a new way of handling the faeces of the world’s largest city. The new Houses of Parliament rushed through legislation and soon commissioned the engineer Joseph Bazalgette to design and build a new sewer system.

Bazalgette’s design was hailed as visionary: a modern network that collected household waste and pumped it to centralised containment points. The shift away from informal sanitation to a formalised system was the bedrock of a public health revolution.

But the system was also a product of its time, and some people and environments benefited more than others. It prioritised the wealthy, and dumped the consequences downstream.

This Victorian legacy infrastructure forms the blueprint of the sewage crisis of the 2020s, in London and across the country. Sewers (often literally the same sewers with the same 150-year-old bricks) still spill untreated waste into rivers when it rains. And, just as in the 19th century, the costs are carried disproportionately by the poor and the environment.

New infrastructure required

Between 1800 and 1850, a third of the population in England moved into urban industrial centres, a shift that ushered in a new era of public health risks from faecal-oral diseases such as cholera. Sustaining this industrial and social revolution required new infrastructure. But sewers built in London and elsewhere were a response to, and a reproduction of, the social arrangements of the industrial period.

Their core design values were to protect the health of the labouring workforce and to secure the lifestyle of wealthy people. Rich neighbourhoods were the first to receive sewer connections, and the business of sewer building became a lucrative investment for the upper classes.

The pipes themselves were designed to both drain rainwater and transport sewage. During periods of heavy rainfall, the combined contents would flush out through pressure relief valves – known as combined sewer overflows – into the Thames and its tributaries. In 2024, these same overflows dumped sewage into England’s watercourses for a total of 3.6 million hours.

Initially, treatment works at Beckton and Crossness were simply discharge points that continued to release raw sewage into the Thames, only further downstream and at the ebb of the tide, blighting many working-class residents of east London.

My research with Anna Mdee and Paul Hutchings found that this also applies elsewhere in England. For instance by the mid-19th century, the city of Bradford became known as “the wool capital of the world”. Yet the Bradford Beck, the river at this city’s heart, was a hotbed of sewage and disease, even after sewers were built in the 1860s. Working class communities living close to its banks were most affected. Tragically, at this time, only 30% of children born to mill workers lived beyond the age of 15.

It was not until the Princess Alice disaster in 1878, when more than 600 people drowned after a passenger ferry sank in a stretch of the Thames near sewage outlets, that politicians called for a better solution for human waste treatment.

Settling tanks were introduced, which separated the liquid and solid elements of sewage, yet both components were disposed of in rivers or seas via pipes or boats transporting the solids out and dumping in deeper waters.

Left to the market

Progress on connecting households to sewers was very uneven. As industrialisation accelerated in London and across England, local governments became ill equipped to address the emerging complexities of sanitation, and often left it to private companies and the market instead.

In Birmingham, for instance, the town centre and wealthy suburbs were connected to sewers in the 1850s, while working-class neighbourhoods had to wait until the 1870s and 1880s.

By the 1890s, wealthy people enjoyed running water and fully plumbed bathrooms, or water closets, containing raised cisterns with the classic Victorian chain pull. Some houses had multiple WCs including separate facilities in servant quarters. However, many working class and rural households still lacked them well into the mid-20th century.

Profits flow upwards

The way sanitation is financed has always reflected inequality. In the 19th century, wealthy city dwellers got sewers first, while upper-class investors and private companies made money from waste. The same pattern persists today. Under England’s privatised water regime, profits flow upwards – not just to CEOs but now to international investors and shareholders. Thames Water, for instance, has been part-owned in turn by a German energy firm, an Australian investment bank and now a Canadian pensions group.

Since privatisation in 1989, these inequalities have been exacerbated. Water companies are highly profitable, yet rivers are still used to dump sewage.

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Read more:
‘Noisome stinking scum’: how Londoners protested river pollution in the 1600s

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This is why creating a new regulator, as proposed in a recent independent review, or renationalising the sector are not enough: the social hierarchies and environmental exploitation of Victorian England are still ingrained in the pipes themselves.

For centuries, nature was seen as a treatment plant, with rivers, lakes and seas absorbing our faeces. This is no longer acceptable.

Sewers built in the 19th century are failing 21st-century England. Just as Joseph Bazalgette reimagined sanitation for the Victorian era, we need an equally bold vision today – one that stops exploiting both rivers and people.

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Dr Ruth Emily Sylvester has previously received funding from EPSRC for her PhD studies. This article is partly based on findings and outputs from her doctoral research.

– ref. From the Great Stink to the modern sewage scandal: why 19th-century sewers are failing 21st-century England – https://theconversation.com/from-the-great-stink-to-the-modern-sewage-scandal-why-19th-century-sewers-are-failing-21st-century-england-263364

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Louise Gentle, Principal Lecturer in Wildlife Conservation, Nottingham Trent University

Do owls have bogies?

Ravine, aged three, Glasgow

Hi Ravine,

The quick answer is yes, but the interesting thing is why.

Bogies, or boogers as they are known in some countries, are made from nasal mucus – you probably call this snot. Snot is produced by your nose and is really important as it helps to trap dirt, germs and other nasty things. This stops these nasty things from going into your body, causing damage and making you ill. Snot also has antibodies in it – special white blood cells that help your body to fight infections. So, snot is super useful for protecting our bodies.

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Curious Kids is a series by The Conversation that gives children the chance to have their questions about the world answered by experts. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskids@theconversation.com and make sure you include the asker’s first name, age and town or city. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we’ll do our very best.

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Snot is also vital to help us to smell things. The mucus traps tiny scent particles that are then transported to special smell receptors in the nose. These allow us to identify different odours like food, which is especially important to help wild animals survive.

Some animals have an amazing sense of smell, much better than ours. Elephants use theirs to sniff out food and water, detect predators, and even recognise their family. But, when animals have a cold, a lot more snot is produced, and this interrupts the ability to smell things properly.

Bogies are just dried snot that collects in nostrils.

Which animals make snot?

All organisms need to protect themselves, and all have a sense of smell. So, all have some sort of snot. Some animals have huge noses and nostrils, so produce loads of snot – these include cows, horses and rhinos. Some animals have a limited sense of smell – animals such as dolphins and snakes taste smells rather than sniff them.

Some animals even include snot in their diets. The vampire squid feeds on marine snow in the oceans. This is made of snot but also poo and dead things. The vampire squid gathers up the falling bits of snot, then once it has collected enough, it eats it.

The marine iguana is one of the sneeziest animals. They produce lots of snot to help them get rid of the large amount of salt they eat from their favourite food, seaweed.

Bird bogies

Animals that rely on their sense of smell produce more mucus – dogs are expert sniffers and are known for having a wet nose. But most birds don’t have a very good sense of smell. This is because they get most information that they need to survive from other senses such as sight and hearing.

As most owls hunt their prey at night, they tend to rely on their amazing sense of hearing rather than their other senses. This means that they don’t use their sense of smell as much as many other animals. So they don’t need to produce loads of snot, but they still make some, and they still have bogies. Their poor sense of smell might explain why I, and my friends who do conservation studies on owls, have never seen an owl with a bogie. We’re going to look more closely now, though!

There are some bird species that rely on a good sense of smell. Kiwis are flightless birds that live in New Zealand. They have long, thin beaks and an excellent sense of smell, and can sniff out earthworms in the soil.

Turkey vultures are also known for their amazing sense of smell. They can smell food such as carcasses from miles away, finding rotting flesh underneath leaves just as quickly as flesh that is out in the open.

Some seabirds use their noses to produce a map of smells to recognise where they are. This is useful on long migratory journeys across the open ocean where there are no features to help them to navigate.

Like the sneezy marine iguanas, seabirds need to get rid of the salt that builds up in their bodies from the seawater they drink and the salty prey they eat. These birds often look like they have a constantly runny nose, with mucus dripping from their nostrils. But the mucus actually comes from salt glands near their eyes.

All of these birds produce lots of snot to help them to smell.

Which animals pick their bogies?

Scientists found that over 90% of people admit to picking their nose. Teenagers seem to pick their nose an average of four times a day – gross!

Nose picking also happens in primates such as gorillas, chimpanzees and lemurs. Recently, an aye-aye – a creepy-looking animal with a super long middle finger – was filmed picking its nose and eating the bogies.

Only animals with fingers can really pick their bogies. Nobody is quite sure why animals pick bogies, but it might be because when snot dries it can sometimes be uncomfortable and block our noses, so picking is done to help us breathe more easily.

Louise Gentle works for Nottingham Trent University.

– ref. Curious kids: do owls have bogies? – https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-do-owls-have-bogies-264514