Using a Petri Dish to Compare the Cleanliness of Human Mouths to Two Dogs, a Cat and a Chicken

Nate Bonham and Calli Gade of The King of Random wanted to see how human mouths compared to other animals in terms of cleanliness. Nate provided a mouth swab, as did Garrett the brother-in-law, Henry the chicken, Nox the dog, Dodger the dog, and Gus the Cat.

After the swabs sat for a week in a Petri dish, Bonham and Gade discovered that humans have the cleanest mouths and chickens have the dirtiest. This rather vivid experiment dispels the myth that dogs have cleaner mouths than humans.

In this video, we are using Petri dishes to test the number of bacteria in the mouth of a human, cat, dog, and even a chicken.

Lori Dorn
Lori Dorn

Lori is a Laughing Squid Contributing Editor based in New York City who has been writing blog posts for over a decade. She also enjoys making jewelry, playing guitar, taking photos and mixing craft cocktails.