What can you do when the loo paper runs out? Here are some ideas.

The good news is we're still human.

Even as we're climbing over each other like crabs in a bucket, following the herd like clean-bummed bison running off a cliff, schools of us stripping supermarket aisles to their beige-boned shelves, we are still people

Sure, our thinking may a little bit irrational and our behaviour more than a little unusual but even as we stash and stockpile toilet paper - the white gold - we're behaving exactly as we're meant to.

We're only human after all.

READ MORE:

* Who needs toilet paper anyway?

* Charges laid over toilet paper fight

* Now we're on a roll New Zealand

Supplied Our behaviour might not be entirely rational but it is understandable, experts say.

Our obsession with buying toilet paper has become the two-plyed symbol of coronavirus, our supermarkets a bogroll battlefield, their shelves a pre-apocalyptic wasteland.

In the aisle of one Kāpiti Coast supermarket on Tuesday a small group of women were taking photos of, well, nothing.

Mary wouldn't give her last name - "my children would die of embarrassment" - but had scored the last roll of loo paper and was both chuffed and ashamed.

"I don't actually need any but you see the photos of all the bare shelves so think 'well I better get some too' ... I've just taken a photo to send to my friend in the States."

Sean Gallup/GETTY In Germany a woman stands before empty shelves of sold-out toilet paper and paper towels at a drug store.

Another shopper taking snaps wouldn't give any of her names but had bought up large the previous day at Pak'nSave.

"I'm just here to take a photo, I've never seen anything like it ... I might do a selfie."

According to AUT senior lecturer Jessica Vredenburg, our behaviour may have become herd-like but it is still rational. Sort of.

"At the core of it it does come down to people trying to regain some control in a situation largely out of control ... there are still some irrational aspects to it."

Stockpiling toilet paper rather than food didn't make much sense in the terms of basic human needs, she said.

VIRGINIA FALLON/STUFF The toilet paper aisle at a Kāpiti Coast supermarket.

"You could argue it's a basic commodity and need but you can do without it, it's not like you will not survive, it's more important to have food."

We hadn't reverted to our animal states but our herd behaviour was driven by two things: scarcity and the constant images of empty shelves.

Panic-buying created a snowball effect, we see people doing it and feel we should do it too.

"It's not like we're doing it mindlessly. As humans we look to others for cues how to behave so it's not like we're blindly following others, there is still a cognitive component to it."

Psychologist Marc Wilson said in times of uncertainty and particularly when presented with novel threats, people looked to others as a guide for what to do.

"This is classic bystander intervention stuff - it looks like an emergency but you're not sure, so you look at other people to see what they're doing."

And why toilet paper?

"We tend to see our physical needs as primary, right - food, shelter, and ... toiletries apparently."

While most people probably didn't have two weeks of TP in their earthquake kit, they had been told it was the period recommended for self isolation and most first world folks wouldn't know what to do if there wasn't a roll handy.

" I think it really highlights how three-ply soft we've become as a species."







