MYTH: A Dog's Mouth is Cleaner Then a Human's
By nature I am not a dog person; growing up I never had a dog and even though my parents had dogs and cats when they grew up they always told me that they were 'allergic' so I couldn't have one. No pets was no big deal for me, I was glad that cleaning up after an animal was not part of my chore list. As I look at other people interacting with their dogs I am amazed at the 'bond' between the pet and owner. I always find it interesting when I see someone driving around with their dog sticking its head out the driver's window; to me that seems dangerous, unless the dog is contributing to driving by working the turn signals or something like. And the one thing that I complete don't understand is when owners KISS their dog, but after doing some research on this myth it looks like it might be more sanitary than kissing a human.
A reader wrote into about.com about this very myth: "a dog's mouth cleaner than a human's." They responded to the reader by saying that dogs don't particularly care what goes into their month, here is a quote from the article:
"A dog's mouth contains a lot of bacteria," notes Dr. Gary "Ask the Vet" Clemons. "Remember, a dog's tongue is not only his wash cloth but also his toilet paper." [source]That was enough to convince me that this myth is totally not true, but here is some more evidence to help convince those of you who are still unbelievers.
ABC News covered this myth and they covered one of the possible origins of this myth:
He thinks the myth that a dog's mouth is clean stems from their practice of licking their wounds.
"And they'll be licking that wound and you'll notice that the wound heals very fast … what that tongue does is it gets rid of the dead tissue," said Becker.
He compares that tongue lashing to the work of a surgeon who cleans out a wound, and said the licking also stimulates circulation. [source]
Here is what livescience.com says about this myth:
Despite a habit of licking things no human would dare, Fido's mouth is often touted as scientifically more sterile. Truth is, oral bacteria are so species-specific that one can't be considered cleaner than the other, just different. [source]
Anything that uses it's tongue for toilet paper has my vote for having a dirtier mouth than someone that doesn't.
Conclusion: False
What are your thoughts about this myth, let us know in the comments?
Technorati tags: dog, mouth, cleaner
If you like this post consider Subscribing to my full feed
0 Comments:
Post a Comment