A few years ago, 10-year-old Guy was driving along the Australian coast when he saw whales, spouting water up into the air. He was amazed. “Then my brother farted, and then I wondered if whales fart,” says Guy.

Guy joined our host Eloise to put his question to Vanessa Pirotta, a wildlife scientist at Macquarie University in Australia on this week’s episode of The Conversation’s Curious Kids podcast.

In each episode of The Conversation’s Curious Kids, a curious kid joins host Eloise to ask a top researcher their burning question. This episode is a follow-on from the episode “Do whales sneeze?” in our first season.

To listen to season two, follow us wherever you get your podcasts, or listen on the Yoto Player via the Discover section on the Yoto interactive audio platform for kids.

You can also listen back to season one and read lots of answers to questions sent in by children around the world in our Curious Kids series.

Got a question? Pop it in an email, or record it and send us the audio to curiouskids@theconversation.com.

This season of The Conversation’s Curious Kids is supported by the University of Southampton in the UK, a world-leading research-intensive university with a global network of international students and campuses in Malaysia and Delhi.

Disclosure statement

Vanessa Pirotta 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.

Credits

This episode of The Conversation’s Curious Kids was hosted and mixed by Eloise Stevens. The producer was Katie Flood and the executive producer was Gemma Ware. Audio clips from Finding Nemo, and seal pup sounds from schaarsen and whale noise from kaekhor via Freesound.

Online videos show the toys being heated up so that they are soft and easeir to squeeze.

However, experts are now asking parents not to heat the toys, as it causes pressure to build inside the squishy, increasing the risk it may explode and release the hot gel inside that can stick to the skin and cause severe burns.

Six children have been treated at the Royal Hospital for Children (RHC) in Glasgow with injuries linked to the trend over the past eight months, with some requiring surgery, including skin grafts.

Joseph must now avoid direct sunlight on the graft area for two years. (Image: PA)

Warning over exploding toys burning children

One of those hurt was eight-year-old Joseph Erskine from Clackmannanshire.

His mother, Stephanie Ewing, said: “My husband and I were home. We were sitting in the living room next door when Joseph came in holding a towel to his face.

“He had already wiped off the burning gel which had also taken off his skin.

“He was saying that his squishy burnt him and we initially thought he meant a chemical burn.

“Then he told us that he had put it in the microwave.

“We were shocked as it had never crossed our minds that he would do that with a toy.

“He has never used the microwave before.

“Joseph’s burn wouldn’t heal on its own and required a graft, where skin was taken from his thigh and applied to his chest.

“He is normally such an active and sporty child with six clubs per week, but all of that is on hold until he heals.”

The injury happened after Joseph saw the trend online, and now his mother is urging other parents to talk to their children about the dangers.

A similar case involved 11-year-old Scarlet Rowe from Irvine.

She suffered burns to her face and eyelid after heating a squishy toy in May.

Her mother, Gina, said: “We didn’t realise what had happened at first, it just looked like slime on her face.

“It was only after a few minutes we realised it had been heated and was burning her skin.

“The swelling was so bad that we weren’t sure what the outcome would be.

“Thankfully, no graft was required but it is so close to her eye that this could have been a lot worse.

“These toys are very popular and easy to buy, but we had no idea about the risks.

“We had only bought them that day.

Scarlet suffered burns to her face and eyelid after heating a squishy toy. (Image: PA)

“I’d strongly advise parents to be vigilant and check what children are watching and trying online.”

Medical experts warn that heating squishy toys in the microwave causes pressure to build up.

This can make the toys explode and release hot gel that sticks to the skin, causing severe burns.

Sharon Ramsay, a burns nurse at the Royal Hospital for Children, said: “Unfortunately, we are seeing a growing number of children with preventable injuries linked to this trend.

“When these toys are heated, the contents can explode and stick to the skin, causing deep burns.

“These injuries can be very serious and may require long-term treatment, including surgery and rehabilitation.

“In some cases, children are left with permanent scarring.

“We strongly urge parents and carers to speak to their children about the risks.”

Recommended Reading

Videos on social media platforms have been promoting the idea that microwaving squishy toys makes them softer.

Burn specialists say injuries from the trend may be especially severe.

This is because the gel inside the toys can remain extremely hot and adhere to the skin, causing deeper and more prolonged burns.

Healing and recovery from burns can take weeks or months and children who suffer them often need ongoing care including dressings, physiotherapy and scar management.

The Scottish National Burns Centre is hosted within NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde.

Ukrainian-born businessman Vadim Ermolaev, who is reportedly among those fighting for his life after the suspected bomb explosion, is one of the wealthiest oligarch figures to emerge from the country’s industrial sector.

Ermolaev is described in public sources as a Cypriot-based businessman of Ukrainian origin. He is a real estate developer, best known for his role in developing projects in the city of Dnipro.

He is associated with the Alef Group, a commercial and industrial conglomerate founded in 1997, with interests spanning real estate, manufacturing, agribusiness, alcohol production and trade.

Public estimates of his wealth have varied widely over time, with figures ranging from around $173 million to more than $800 million.

According to publicly available reports, Ermolaev obtained Cypriot citizenship in 2019 and later renounced his Ukrainian citizenship.

He is under sanctions in Ukraine.

WARNING, GRAPHIC CONTENT: The woman, 31, was hiking with her partner and best friend near Orlando

A woman has died after a horror alligator attack in Florida. The hiker, 31, died after her arm was ripped off by the alligator, which was reportedly between 12ft and 13ft long. The victim was hiking with her boyfriend and best friend near Orlando, Florida, in the US on Sunday (June 28) when they decided to take a break at the Econlockhatchee River.

The group had been cooling down in the river’s shallow, three-foot-deep waters when they were startled by the reptile, which clamped its jaws around both of the woman’s arms.

Her boyfriend, in a desperate attempt to free her arms from its vice-like grip, scrambled to call emergency services, but the beast managed to tear off one of her limbs and severely maul the other, reports Daily Star.

Wildlife official Grant Eller, a lieutenant in Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, stated in a briefing that the group was kneeling in shallow waters at around 1.30pm when the attack occurred.

Mr Eller said the unnamed woman’s boyfriend was “trying to get her arms away from the alligator’s mouth” when he called emergency services.

In the call recording, which was obtained by US publication NBC News, he can be heard screaming and crying while another woman described the horror of the situation.

The woman can be heard informing the dispatcher: “Ok, both her arms, both her arms, both her arms are off, like, basically.”

In response, the dispatcher assures her that help is en route before asking: “Does she still have her arms attached to her?” The woman then details the extent of the damage inflicted by the alligator.

She explains: “One of them is, like, very hanging on [by a] thread, and the other was off.”

When asked by the dispatcher where the other arm had gone, she simply responds: “Gone.”

Further screams captured on the call as the woman’s partner and friend carry her and attempt to flag down their arriving rescuers, reports the Mirror.

Mr Eller stated that the woman, who resided in Orlando, Florida, passed away before she could reach a hospital.

The official refrained from identifying the victim of the attack, stating that authorities were still trying to contact her family, who did not reside in the state.

Seminole County sheriff’s deputies reported they had “harvested” two alligators seen near the scene of the horrific attack with the assistance of a professional trapper.

Both of the reptiles, they said, were enormous, measuring 13 and 12 feet long respectively. The DNA from both has been sent for lab analysis to identify the attacker.

The deadly assault is among multiple incidents that have occurred throughout central Florida within just the past week, with alligators growing particularly aggressive during this period of the year – following the conclusion of their mating season.

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The American revolution was not a straightforward contest between colonists and mother country, despite what the Declaration of Independence said about dissolving the bonds between one people and another. There were, of course, loyalists in America who refused to join the rebel cause. And in Britain, there were many who took the side of the revolution.

Just like in the colonies themselves, people’s choice of allegiance was sometimes a matter of self-interest. Merchants and manufacturers, whose livelihoods depended on trade with America, were some of the most vocal opponents of the British government’s aggressive policies in the 1760s and 1770s. When fighting broke out in 1775, they organised petitions calling for peace and reconciliation.

But the revolution was also a question of principle – a struggle over the nature and limits of freedom – and plenty of British people treated it that way too.

In fact, since the 1760s, the American colonists’ dispute with the government had been closely tied to questions about corruption, oligarchy and executive tyranny in Britain itself. The London-based journalist and politician John Wilkes had catalysed a popular opposition movement, making himself the champion of a coalition of London merchants and labourers. They believed the king was gathering too much power, using bribes and jobs to control parliament and keep it from truly representing the people.

It was this political background that produced Thomas Paine, who moved to Philadelphia in 1774 with a recommendation from Benjamin Franklin (who himself was based in London from 1757 until 1775 when he headed home to join the revolution). A new collection of Paine’s writings suggests that he was far more active than previously thought in the newspaper and pamphlet debates of the 1760s and early 1770s. He did not become a revolutionary in America, but in Britain.

Meanwhile American colonists’ arguments about their own lack of representation, and their abuse by corrupt ministers, resonated across the Atlantic. Wilkes never really won Franklin’s respect, but he did work closely with the Virginian Arthur Lee, who wrote frequently in opposition newspapers while he lived in London between 1770 and 1776. Once “arbitrary rule” was established in the colonies, Lee warned, it would “speedily traverse the ocean, and finally fix itself in England.”

Among those who linked the growing American crisis to the question of representative government was the antislavery activist and lawyer Granville Sharp. He published a pamphlet in 1774 declaring “the people’s natural right to a share in the legislature,” in which he argued that “all British subjects,” including those in America and Ireland, were “equally free by the law of nature.” Irish legislative independence was indeed one of the outcomes of the transatlantic revolutionary struggle.

Working against despotism

As the crisis lurched into outright rebellion in 1775, the historian Catharine Macaulay accused the government of working to speed up “the slow but steady progress of despotism” throughout Britain and its empire. Indeed, Macaulay’s History of England championed the republican revolutionaries of the 17th century.

As the historian Mary Sarah Bilder has recently shown, it inspired Thomas Jefferson’s text of the Declaration of Independence. Macaulay’s brother, John Sawbridge, was one of Wilkes’ leading allies in parliament.

The patriot cause in the colonies also won strong support among Britain’s dissenting Protestants – those who refused to toe the Church of England line and therefore suffered various exclusions from civil life in Britain. Dissenters had their own tradition of fighting for liberty, which fed into the joint struggles over parliamentary reform and American rights.

In the mid-1770s, dissenting schoolteacher James Burgh published a three-volume catalogue of “public errors, defects, and abuses” in the British political system. “When the people take redress into their own hands,” he predicted, “woe to the tyrants”.

Spirit of revolution

Perhaps the most influential pro-American tract published in Britain, though, was the work of the Welsh dissenting intellectual and preacher, Richard Price. His Observations on Civil Liberty sold 60,000 copies, its circulation boosted by the flurry of indignant responses from friends of the government.

Price emphasised that liberty depended on popular sovereignty – the rule of all people equally – which he said was being abused on both sides of the ocean. Revolution in America, he argued, was part of an approaching “revolution in the affairs of this kingdom”.

Price’s book (according to its detractors) made an impression on Britain’s ordinary working people, “taylors, tallow-chandlers, soap-boilers … chimney sweeps” and so on, not to mention “female patriots”. It was certainly read by James Aitken – “John the Painter” – a house painter who had been radicalised to the revolutionary cause while living in the American colonies in the early 1770s. Aitken set fire to the Portsmouth naval dockyard in late 1776 as part of a campaign to cripple the Royal Navy. He was caught and executed in 1777. By then, authorities were seriously worried about the impact the American Revolution was having close to home.

Most British people never sided with the rebels. Even Price and his fellow sympathisers did not go as far as Paine had done (in Common Sense) and call for the end of the monarchy itself. When Britain’s longstanding Catholic enemy, France, entered the war on the American side in 1778, public opinion swung more firmly behind the government.

Still, at the Gordon Riots two years later people were said to have shouted: “Peace with America, and war with France!” Anger at Britain’s corrupt and oligarchic politics was still widespread.

When the British war effort at last petered out following defeat at Yorktown in 1781, a new government took over led by men who had opposed war in the first place. They took some reforming steps before collapsing into infighting.

Price, along with plenty of like-minded people, took hope from the outcome. “The struggle has been glorious on the part of America,” he wrote his American friend Benjamin Rush in 1783, “and it has now issued just as I wished it to issue, in the emancipation of the American states and the establishment of their independence”.

In The Mixer’s World Cup special

Everything you need to know about the World Cup – England updates, the games to watch and stories you missed – in five minutes, at 1pm, every day.

Heavy security personnel has been deployed across South Africa because of fears that anti-immigration protests could turn violent as President Cyril Ramaphosa urged those planning to take part to do so without “intimidation, threats or ultimatums”.

The planned protests mark an unofficial deadline set by campaigners for all undocumented foreigner to leave the country.

Many have already fled to escape violence and intimidation. South African police say 25,000 have been repatriated so far. Most are from other African countries.

One undocumented Malawian told the BBC he was “happy to be going back” but “heartbroken” to be leaving behind four young children.

Johannesburg, where one of the protests is planned, is unusually quiet and all the shops in the vicinity of where marchers are due to gather are closed.

Ramaphosa has repeatedly warned demonstrators to act peacefully and responsibly, while also accepting the need for immigration reforms.

“Some foreign nationals who live in South Africa are here lawfully,” he reminded citizens in his weekly newsletter, external.

“They work, study, raise families, invest in our economy and contribute positively to our society. They too are entitled to the protection of our laws and our Constitution.

“The right to protest and freedom of expression does not allow people to threaten or intimidate others, or to engage in acts of vandalism or violence,” he wrote.

There are more than three million documented foreign nationals in South Africa, according to official figures.

Ahead of the deadline, thousands of migrants have been awaiting processing in temporary camps for several weeks out of fear for their safety.

From avoiding confrontation to validating emotions, these five simple steps can help you respond more effectively to a child’s anxiety

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Words by

Dr Emily Crosby

June 30, 2026

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From avoiding confrontation to validating emotions, these five simple steps can help you respond more effectively to a child’s anxiety

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1) Be curious

When supporting a child or young person, start with curiosity. Try to explore what might be going on beneath the surface, rather than assuming you already know the cause. As adults, it is natural to reach conclusions quickly, but a child’s experience may be very different from what we expect. Staying open-minded allows space for underlying worries, unmet needs or hidden pressures to emerge.

Image: Ketut Subiyanto 

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2) Avoid confrontation

Children are far more likely to open up when they feel emotionally safe. A calm, non-confrontational tone helps prevent them from feeling blamed or judged. Try to frame the difficulty as something they are experiencing, rather than something they are. When young people sense that they will be met with understanding rather than criticism, they are more willing to seek and accept support.

Image: Ketut Subiyanto 

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3) Label and validate feelings and emotions

Anxiety can be confusing, particularly for younger children who may struggle to name what they are experiencing. Offering possible words for their emotions can help – are they feeling worried, overwhelmed or frustrated? Validate those feelings and let them know that whatever they’re feeling is OK. When emotions are acknowledged rather than dismissed, children feel safer talking about them.

Image: Jordan Whitt 

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4) Go at their pace and offer a safe space

Follow the young person’s lead, especially at the beginning of a conversation. If an adult pushes too quickly for answers or solutions, the child may retreat. Allow pauses. Accept partial explanations. Make it clear that they can share as much or as little as they feel able to. This steady approach helps them feel contained, supported and in control of their story.

Image: Vitaly Gariev 

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5) Offer solutions when they are ready and regulated

Problem-solving is important, but timing matters. When a child is overwhelmed, their thinking brain is less accessible. Focus first on helping them feel calm and understood. Once they are more settled, you can gently explore possible next steps together. Approaching solutions collaboratively, rather than imposing them, strengthens confidence and resilience.

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Motorists wishing to use the A11 this Tuesday morning, be warned: You will face local diversions in the wake of today’s pre-dawn crash.

A National Highways spokesperson said in an online statement: “Traffic is being diverted via local routes.

They added: “If this closure impacts on your planned route, please allow extra journey time. Plan ahead, you may wish to re-route or even delay your journey.”