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[quote=Anonymous]Dogs don't have cleaner mouths than humans. It's just that human mouths harbor bacteria that is more suited to humans. Thus, a bite from a human is very likely to get infected due to species-specific bacteria and viruses.

However, dogs have MUCH poorer oral hygiene than humans (dogs don't brush and floss) and they do lick each others' anuses and eat feces and rotting animals. It's very clear that dogs have dirty, disgusting mouths, even if you're not as likely to get, say, strep throat from kissing a dog as you as from kissing a human. You're still going to get a healthy dose of all the feces/garbage/rot that the dog has sampled recently.

The myth that dogs have cleaner mouths than humans comes from the observations that dogs lick their wounds, and those wounds generally don't become infected. Well, that's actually because the licking removes debris and dead tissue that can cause infection. It's instinctive in most mammals to clean wounds with their mouths (think -- when you get a paper cut, don't you stick your finger in your mouth? Where do you think "kissing a boo-boo" comes from?), but this doesn't mean that the animal has a clean mouth, just that its mouth is clean enough not to cause worse infection than its immune system can handle in an open wound.[/quote]

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