You and Your Pet Might Have Even More In Common Than You Think!

Speaking from my own experience, there are few better feelings than coming home to an animal that doesn't care how bad your day was, how much crap you had to take, or what bad decisions you may have made, but just loves you regardless. At this point in time, according to the American Pet Products Association, around 71 percent of American households have at least one pet. Furthermore, as seems to be proven time and time again, many people tend to in some way resemble their furry friends (we all know the little old lady with the little white crusty dog).

Image sourced from The Conversation journal

This begs the question; how similar are you to your pet? Sure, we can look at the surface level appearances, but what if we take it a step further? What I specifically want to bring your attention to is how similar you and your pet are in terms of your microbial diversity.

There are trillions of species of bacteria on the planet, and a common place to find them is in your own body! While this may sound like a bad thing, bacteria as a whole tend to get a bad rap. In actuality, there are many species of bacteria inside us that we would have a very tough time living without! Helpful bacteria exist in our gut, lungs, mouth, skin, and various other regions, and help us with various processes. With this said, then, how do the microbiomes of our pets compare? You might be surprised to know that they aren't too dissimilar from you!

It is a perhaps hard-to-admit fact that many of us don't touch grass as often as we'd like to. But what about our pets? We take our dogs on walks and let them out to pee, roll in the dirt, and eat things we can only hope are edible (cats are a different story; they do what they want and we have no power to stop them). Because of, in part, this different lifestyle (but also due to various other factors), we find in both cats and dogs microbes that aren't always found in humans. However, we also find that there are many bacteria we have in common!

Of the many bacteria we share with cats and dogs, some of the most common are in the Staphylococcus, Lactobacillus, and Streptococcus genuses, with many more to explore if you are interested. While studies are somewhat unclear so far on exactly how the presence of pets in the household might affect our own microbial diversity (check out Household Pet Ownership and the Microbial Diversity of the Human Gut Microbiota), it is safe to say that we share and transmit some amount of microbes between each other. Though this particular study claims that they found no link between pet ownership and microbial diversity, they stated that it was a complex field that requires significantly more elucidation to determine a true relationship between you and your pet's microbiomes.

Staphylococcus aureus

As such, the next time you give your pet a hug, thank them for helping you not just to stay happy, but also because you have more in common with them than you thought!