Sometimes you notice your dog sticking its face in all kinds of places that should not be touched with any type of nose or mouth. At such moments, the last thing on your mind is giving your dog a kiss. Now, we are not recommending that you kiss your dog after one of his “nasal excursions” into unsavory places, but a kiss every now and then (when the dog is clean) is actually good for you.

A team of researchers at the University of Arizona, led by an anthropology doctoral student Kim Kelly have proposed a theory according to which microbes that are found in the canine’s gut and find their way to their snout can be beneficial for your own health, showing significant probiotic properties. In short, when you kiss the dog, you get into contact with these microbes which then benefit your own microorganism “population”.

Kim proposes the following:

“We’ve co-evolved with dogs over the millennia, but nobody really understands what it is about this dog-human relationship that makes us feel good about being around dogs. Is it just that they’re fuzzy and we like to pet them, or is there something else going on under the skin? The question really is: Has the relationship between dogs and humans gotten under the skin? And we believe it has.”

The study is a result of the UA’s Human-Animal Interaction Research Initiative which looks to promote cooperation between researches from various disciplines in order to investigate how human-animal relationships benefit both parties.