From Chimpanzini Bananini to Ballerina Cappuccina: how gen alpha went wild for Italian brain rot animals

When one of Tim's year 8 pupils asked him about his "favourite Italian brain rot animal", he thought he'd misheard. "My hearing is not great at the best of times – I had to ask her to repeat this probably four or five times," he says. Tim (not his real name) was familiar with the term "brain rot", used to describe the sense of mental decline after too much time spent mindlessly scrolling online (and voted Oxford University Press's word of the year for 2024). But what was this about it being Italian? He told his pupil to get on with her work, sat down at his laptop – and immediately turned to Google.