Whether monkeys liked it when dental floss was used by scientist Jack Caton in Rochester, NY, in his studies in 1979 (see the abstract here) we do not know. But we do know that they like to do it by themselves, at least since the 2009 paper by Masatake et al. (PLoS ONE 4(3): e4768. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0004768).

I have long used, in my classes, this amazing movie of some monkeys in Thailand below, which not only use tourists’ hairs for interdental tooth cleaning but even teach their attentive offspring how to do flossing. Although the technique is not exactly what we teach our students.

It is a bit controversially discussed here whether the video might be used for motivation and instruction in oral hygiene measures in our dental clinic in the case of patients who express problems with proper flossing.

14 November 2012 @ 1:19 pm.

Last modified November 14, 2012.