Dirtymouth

No swill-grubbing beast has a dirtier mouth than man. Such is the humiliating opinion offered in last week's Journal of the American Dental Association by the University of Pennsylvania's Dentist Leonard Rosenthal and colleagues. They based their opinion on extensive researches, mostly at Philadelphia's zoo. They examined the saliva of one hippopotamus, two lions, one baboon, two elephants, one rhinoceros, 28 pigs, two horses, two chimpanzees, 50 dogs, eight cats, a rat.

The saliva of all these animals, said the dentists, "was notable for low bacterial count in comparison with man's." Only animal with a mouth bad enough to be nearly human : "a 30-year-old baboon with an extremely dirty mouth from which many teeth were missing."

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