A question for pet owners
When a human person poos forth a turd, he or she uses toilet paper (or perhaps some other method, depending on culture) to remove the fecal residue from the anal region. Even if some very minimal traces remain there, humans almost always wear clothes. These precautions mean humans can sit on chairs, sofas, and other surfaces with no fear that any hint of fecal matter will be transferred to those surfaces.
Dogs, cats, and other animals defecate roughly as often as humans do, but even if they have special places set aside to do this, they do not use toilet paper or wear clothes. Thus a slight residuum of excrement presumably remains at the anal region, uncovered. Since they often sit on carpets or even on chairs and sofas in human dwellings, how is it possible to totally prevent them from leaving faint traces of dung -- even if undetectable to the senses -- on those surfaces? That is, how is it possible for a household which contains such animals to maintain proper standards of hygiene, keeping the places on which the animals sometimes sit truly free of such contamination?
It's a question which irks me whenever I enter a place where animals reside alongside humans. If there is an answer, I'd be curious to know what it is.
posted by Infidel753 at 2:04 AM
9 Comments:
No shit!
Dogs don't seem to have a lot of poo residue on their fur after a dump and cats constantly clean their a-holes with their tongues so I don't think it is a huge problem. Humans are supposed to shit by squatting not sitting so maybe, if we still squatted, we would have less residual poo on our anus. Just a thought.
I'd say at with animals. you only need to worry about what their behinds have touched. Or where they've walked. And since many dogs & all cats, clean their own butts and paws, "kisses" from them are really not a good idea. It's very interesting that after so many years of being told to sterilize everything children touch, now they are finding that exposure to animals and other normal household "filth" might help prevent asthma (research is continuing) and helps to develop their immune system. The pet owner is probably a bigger worry about what they carry and spread around the home.
Humans touch *everything* and it's not just poop residue - people constantly touch noses, eyes, mouth, scratch places, etc. I recall an interview with a doctor who said toddlers and small children are some of the best, most efficient disease vectors in the world. There's a reason the CDC had to put out instructions how to properly wash hands when covid spread far and wide 4 years ago.
The results from swab/culture tests of places where great numbers of humans gather or share equipment are not something anyone with serious concerns (like OCD or hypochondriac level concerns) of catching diseases, or what is on things they touch, should see.
Ok, so here are my thoughts since I have a dog. Dogs don't have butt cheeks that that poo gets smeared on. When a dog poo's, at least mine, the poo comes out and the anus retracts inside a little bit after they are done. There's nothing left on the outside for the most part. If my dog has a problem like diarrhea, I will wipe his behind before coming inside the apartment. But even in those times I see nothing on the paper towels. Dogs will also lick with butts after going to the bathroom (yes I know it's gross) which cleans anything off. My dog doesn't have hair right around his anus so poo doesn't get stuck in the hair either. Dogs with longer hair might have a problem with that though if their humans don't trim the hair. So there might be some traces of dog poo around the house, I've never thought about it. I clean his bed, my bed, shampoo the rugs ect.. pretty often so hopefully I'm washing most of anything away.
They lick their butts clean,
years ago I took a course dealing with sterilizing surgical instruments for the hospital where I worked. The lady giving the course, masters in nursing and PhD in microbiology, spent our first day dispelling myths:
There is no such thing as sterile, as in absolutely sterile.
There are rigorous standards but none of them end up getting you absolute sterility, no microbes.
Even if you could get to that point it wouldn't remain so in the vicinity of humans, or any mammals.
Humans are impossible to sterilize without killing, or inflicting great harm. Hair, hair follicles (with their own inhabitants), under fingernails, sweat and subacious glands, the entire GI track, are stuffed with microorganisms. There are more microscopic passengers on an individual than they have cells in their body.
The 99% reduction in bacteria on a small patch of skin skin you can get with vigorous and very careful hand washing drops an entirely normal 1000,000. to 10,000.
The types of organisms are far more important than the numbers. Most microbes that cause sickness in dogs are far less adapted to humans. And vice versa.
In the past all bacteria were seen as the enemy. A more modern and effective understanding is to see some microorganisms as friendly placeholders that help suppress disease causing agents.
Many people have found that some chronic health issues can be managed by avoiding soap that washes away the friendly microorganisms.
As scary as it may be to some the fact is some people simply don't wash their hands after defecating. Those reminders you see in restaurant bathrooms are not decorative. Compliance hovers around 80% typically.
The point is that we live in an ocean of microorganisms that are, in practical terms, impossible to get away from. The vast majority of those critters do no harm or are vital to keeping the body healthy. Basic hygiene helps but nothing, nothing, is ever germ-free. A more useful measure is pathogen-free. As in there is nothing that will cause a disease.
Thanks to all respondents for the information. It seems that both ends of the beasts are equally suspect -- that is, the problem is even worse than I imagined. It makes dogs' habit of trying to lick people even more disturbing. It's odd that we tolerate this. We wouldn't tolerate a human who went around trying to lick strangers.
Dogs and cats were originally domesticated because they were so useful (dogs for many purposes we're still familiar with, cats for keeping rodents away from stored food early in the history of agriculture), and their contribution to our survival back then was probably much greater than the risks posed by their habits. I've heard that if you have a mouse or rat problem, getting a cat is still one of the most effective ways of dealing with it.
But the issues I raise are valid. As the last commenter points out, absolute cleanliness is impossible and it's really a matter of degree. Many microorganisms are even beneficial. People tolerate a mild amount of dust, dirt, and mess when the effort required to get rid of it would be greater than the benefit would be worth. But there are good reasons why civilized humans generally have stricter standards of hygiene, and a greater sense of visceral disgust at organic filth, than animals or primitive humans do. We couldn't safely live at the high densities found in cities unless we maintained such standards, which we do largely because we feel such reactions.
And there are good reasons why we have an especially strong disgust reaction at the thought of contact with, or even the presence of, excrement. Contamination with excrement is an especially strong disease vector, as we can see from outbreaks of cholera in cities where water becomes contaminated with traces of sewage after some disaster, or from the repeated outbreaks at religious festivals involving bathing in the contaminated Ganges river. We would be absolutely revolted at the thought of any contact with a human who went around licking anuses, and we are, yes, rightly grossed out by the thought of people not washing their hands after using the restroom. Those kinds of reactions are of great practical value. If we lost our sense of disgust for such things and became more tolerant of them, disease risks would escalate considerably.
The reactions may even be genetically innate. Think of how even the smell of excrement disgusts and repels people. As far as I know, that response is universal across cultures.
Those differences of degree matter. Yes, some humans also fall short, but most animals simply are not going to maintain what we would consider even basic standards of hygiene, because they do not have the intelligence to understand the reasons for them, nor do they have the feelings of revulsion which humans have developed to encourage compliance even among those who also lack such understanding.
For the most part humans are far more problematic than animals. We expose ourselves to far more types of environment and foods. Humans typically carry a far wider diversity of microbes than other animals. Far more of that great diversity in, on and around us are potentially disease causing simply because they are adapted to live in, on or around humans. Worry less about the animals and more about the humans.
Humans, even the cleanest and most hygienic, are microbiological disaster areas. We shed huge amounts of dead skin. Every particle of which carries a vast number of microbes. Bacteria, viruses, fungus and fugal spores. Add to this the grease we exude from every pore. Sweat. Spit, phlegm, earwax, tears and snot. We literally leave a trail of germs and detritus everywhere we go. Bloodhounds are not following our auras.
Adding to the mix. Kids raised with family pets are significantly less likely to suffer allergies. An allergy being, in essence a hyperactive immune defense system, and a genetic legacy of neanderthals fighting off macro-parasites (worms).
It's a jungle out there. Stay frosty.
You're missing the point. Because of our intelligence, we can minimize the damaging effects of those things. Even at normal standards of hygiene, never mind "the cleanest and most hygienic", we take precautions to avoid exposing others to our "spit, phlegm, earwax, tears and snot" or coming into contact with those of others. Humans who visibly do not observe these precautions are objects of repulsion. Normal contact with other humans who observe normal standards of hygiene doesn't make people sick, even at the extremely high population densities in cities. By contrast, most wild animals are infested with disease and parasites (almost all epidemic diseases of humans originated as mutant forms of animal diseases), and contact with wild animals even today carries a high risk of some diseases. We can exert some control over the behavior of domesticated animals -- by controlling where they defecate, for example -- but animals will never take the same kind of precautions humans do because they don't have the intelligence to understand the need for them.
In any case, the post was asking about excrement specifically -- what factors, if any, mitigate exposure to animal excrement in houses with pets -- and the first few comments more than adequately answered the question.
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