THE EXPERIMENT
Our test media were 3 sheep's blood agar plates.
Our incubator was a box with a light bulb. I swabbed both mine and Kita's mouths and grew a lawn of bacteria.
My bacteria is on the left. Kita's is on the right.Kita's looks far worse, but before you judge...my bacteria is Streptococcus species. This is the stuff that can give you strept throat, scarlet fever, pneumonia, and a flesh eating disease called necrotizing fasciits. Kita's bacteria is a mix of stuff commonly found in a dog's mouth (which by the way doesn't make humans sick) and common environmental bacteria. (FYI: She has been playing with her pet rock before I swabbed her mouth - shame on me for not reducing the number of variables in my experiment.)
My lick of agar.To see what was on our tongues and not just in our mouths, we each got to lick an agar plate. Again, I've got a "beautiful lawn" (my instructor's words) of Strept species.
Kita's agar lick. She really liked the taste so she got a few licks in...CONCLUSION: INCONLUSIVE
But, we both have dirty mouths.
This myth will need more testing before we can come to a conclusion.
In my opinion, the saying that a dog's mouth is cleaner than a humans comes from the fact that the normal bacteria in a dog's mouth won't make a human sick. On the flip side, when humans swap saliva, we are exchanging potentially pathogenic bacteria. Now go give your spouse a big smooch!!
8 comments:
I can't believe you licked an agar plate...that's disgusting...
I did something like this with my 6th graders, where we tested for the germiest place in the school...it was based solely on amount of bacteria growth though, since we had no idea what the bacteria was that was growing...
That is way gross. I am not sure about any of this. I am not a germaphob but now I think I might become one.
Ha! That's so funny! I love that you did this. See, this is an example of why you deserved to get into the hygiene program: you're smart and you love learning and you go the extra mile. You have a question and you find out the answer!
And bacterial family/genus/species considered... I still would never swap spit with a dog. Hahaha! Still interesting to know, though!
Gross...and cool at the same time! Way to go student-extraordinaire!!!
Oh Jo... How I do not miss Microbiology AT ALL. Good experiment though, very nicely described. :)
Oh come on! I was excited to finally have a conclusive answer regarding the matter! I feel gypped.
What can I say? You get what you pay for Courtney. If I could get proper funding I could do this research correctly!
Oh boy that really makes me not want to french kiss EVER again. I have always wondered about dogs mouths vs. human mouths. What a great idea from microbiology. You should take this education to a whole new level....HIGH SCHOOLS. This alone may decrease teen pregnancies.
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