Science Experiment: Who does bacteria love more?
Is it a myth?
Experiments with petri dishes show that dog mouths have
fewer bacteria than human mouths.
MetPet.com Staff Writer
Yeech!
This is an interesting and easy activity for a rainy day
with the kids or just to settle your curious mind.
Do dogs really have cleaner mouths than humans?
You will need a human, a dog, a cat and other mildly
cooperative pets and some petri
dishes with growing medium. Twirl a swab around
said mouths and swab onto the petri dishes. We did
hear about some direct licking of dishes going on when
this topic was presented on The Discovery Channel's
Mythbusters but, well, you decide.
We have seen this experiment repeated a number of times
and dogs do indeed have significantly lower bacteria
growth. We've never actually seen it with cats,
parrots, hamsters and other pets so the jury is still
out.
That said, doctors would be much more worried about
infection if you were bitten by a human than by a
vaccinated dog.
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