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Hello, this is 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English. I'm Neil.

If you live in a city, you're probably familiar with this very modern site. A man walking

his dog drops a little black plastic bag into a rubbish bin. Inside the bag is dog poo.

It might make it seem that humans are hygienic creatures, certainly cleaner than dogs who go to

the toilet wherever they want, but is this the whole story? How do us humans compare with other

animals when it comes to keeping ourselves and our environment clean? In this programme we'll be

asking whether humans as a species are naturally clean and tidy. In fact, from dumping raw sewage

into rivers to littering the streets with trash, humans aren't always good at dealing with waste.

While some animals on the other hand are instinctively clean. Right, cats, for example, dig a hole

to bury their poo. In the past, humans got rid of their waste by throwing it into the street or

into streams and rivers hoping the water would wash it away. House of sight, house of mind,

that's a phrase used to say that it's easier to forget something when you can't see it.

But this doesn't always work as we'll discover from my quiz question, Sam. In Victorian times,

the population of London boomed and so did all the pee and poo being thrown into the river

Thames. It got so bad that by the 1850s, the awful smell had its own name, but what?

Was it A, the great stench? B, the great stink? Or C, the great smell?

All sounds pretty disgusting, Neil, but I'll go for A, the great stench.

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