Is it true that a dog's mouth is ten times cleaner than a human's? And if it is, how come?

Question

I've heard this from a few different sources, but i'm not sure if it's ture, and if it is, why it's true.

Answer 1

Kind of. Look at like this. The majority of germs in a dog's mouth are not harmful to humans. The same cannot be said for other humans.

Answer 2

Angelgirl is on the right track. The answer to your question is no. But if you had asked, "Am I more likely to catch some sort of disease from having a dog lick me or from having a person lick me?" the correct answer would be "From a person." This does not mean that a dog's mouth is cleaner - it only means that many of the diseases carried by a dog are not transferable to a human (and vice-versa). Your dog is not going to get the cold you have because your dog does not make a good host for your cold virus. And you're not going to catch a cold from your dog for the same reason. It isn't that a dog's mouth has fewer germs - it's only that many of the germs it does have won't affect a human.

Answer 3

The way I heard it when I was a kid was that a dog's mouth is actually sterile. I can even recall someone in my neighborhood attempting to "prove" this to anybody who'd sit still for it by letting his dog lick the inside of his mouth — not an especially conclusive demonstration, but memorable just the same

I believed what I was told at the time in spite of contradictory evidence at hand, namely that people often become quite ill and even die from dog bites. If a dog's mouth is sterile, how could it transmit rabies, tetanus, pasteurella or any of the other types of infection associated with dog bites?

But I digress. The precise question was: Is a dog's mouth cleaner than a human's? The answer to that is no, too, and basically for the reasons you've cited. As we all know, dogs aren't particularly fussy about where they put their tongues or what goes into their mouths.

"A dog's mouth contains a lot of bacteria," says Dr. Gary "Ask the Vet" Clemons. "Remember, a dog's tongue is not only his wash cloth but also his toilet paper."

Not only accurate, but delicately put!

So, where did the notion that a dog's mouth is cleaner than a human's come from? Doctors, evidently. It has long been noted in the medical literature that human bites are more likely to become infected than those of other mammals, including dogs. Statistics to that effect were published in journals and repeated by medical professionals, and folk wisdom took off from there.

Bites vs. closed-fist injuries

Lately, however, the accuracy of those statistics has come under attack, with critics objecting that some of the human "bites" compared to animal bites in earlier studies weren't really bites at all. A 1988 review published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine found the following:

Recent study of human bites has shown that the early literature depicting all human bites as having an extraordinarily high infection and complication rate was biased by its emphasis on human bites of the hand that presented late with infection already present. These bites, the so-called closed-fist injuries (CFI), do indeed have a poor prognosis, but it may be as much due to their location and initial neglect as to the source of the injury. Human bites elsewhere do not seem to have any higher risk than animal bites, which have an infection rate of about 10%

http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/dogs/a/dog_breath.htm

Answer 4

A dogs mouth is cleaner to a dg but not for a human..They carry E-coli and all sorts of stuff.I went to New Orleans after Katrina to help with Animals and got bitten pretty bad..They had to leave my wound open in that filthy place because of how much bacteria a dogs mouth carries..It had to heal open and I had to take Strong antibiotics...Dogs have bacteria that is beneficfiel to them

Answer 5

I don't think it's anywhere near 10x cleaner, but the reason is that they have a higher body temperature (as smaller animals generally do). Just as our increased temperature when we're feverish will kill off some invading micro-organisms, their higher temperature keeps some micro-organisms from multiplying. So they just naturally don't have as many "cooties" as we do!

Answer 6

No. Read this:

http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/dogs/a/dog_breath.htm

Answer 7

the bacteria in a dogs mouth make them cleaner then us humans!

Answer 8

I think its what we eat, and frankly, we put anything in our mouths.

Answer 9

yes

their teeth are not as close together as ours

with our teeth we get food stuck and rots

they don't get food stuck

or do they

hopr its true!!
:)

Answer 10

It's not true at all. They eat poop!