The truth about ‘man flu’

Videos and memes mock men for overreacting when they catch an everyday illness. But is there a biological reason for men’s behaviour? According to the Cambridge Dictionary, man flu is “an illness such as a cold that is not serious, but that the person who has it treats as more serious, usually when this person is a man”. According to the farcical Urban Dictionary, man flu is “more painful than childbirth”.

Of course, man flu, which has been parodied online for years, is not a diagnosable affliction, and it goes without saying that not all men become helpless fatalists when they have run-of-the-mill sniffles, while some women do. But experts say at the heart of the joke lie some fascinating immunological differences that exist between the sexes - not only in humans, but also in some other species..