• Question: why do humans sneeze?

    Asked by anon-354693 on 8 Mar 2023. This question was also asked by anon-354666, anon-354670, anon-354694, anon-354663, anon-354678.
    • Photo: Kirstie Andrews

      Kirstie Andrews answered on 8 Mar 2023:

      We sneeze to clear the nose, usually to clear something that has irritated it. We cannot sneeze when we are asleep- we have to at least partially wake up for the sneeze to happen.

    • Photo: Silvia Mazzotta

      Silvia Mazzotta answered on 8 Mar 2023:

      My instinctive answer was: to make me jump!
      But, on a more serious/scientific note, we sneeze to get rid of stuff! Stuff is a bit of a vague term, and I used it on purpose as we can sneeze to get rid of all sort of things: it can be tiny bits of dust, it can be smoke, it can be bacteria…so many options! But in any case, the result is the same: air, water, mucus (yuk) and the incriminated substance all come out with quite incredible force. This is why covering you nose when you sneeze is polite: we really don’t want to spread germs around!

    • Photo: Hannah Tanner

      Hannah Tanner answered on 9 Mar 2023: last edited 9 Mar 2023 1:31 pm

      Things like respiratory viruses (the kind that give you colds and flu) make use of our ability to sneeze. We sneeze to get rid of stuff that’s irritating our noses. The viruses deliberately irritate our noses to make us sneeze them out of our bodies to get breathed in by other humans.

    • Photo: Louisse Mirabueno

      Louisse Mirabueno answered on 16 Mar 2023:

      We sneeze because our body is trying to get rid of something inside your nose. It’s a defense mechanism for our body to get rid of something that’s not supposed to be there 😊

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