  We consider theories where the dark matter particle carries flavor quantum
numbers, and has renormalizable contact interactions with the Standard Model
fields. The phenomenology of this scenario depends sensitively on whether dark
matter carries lepton flavor, quark flavor or its own internal flavor quantum
numbers. We show that each of these possibilities is associated with a
characteristic type of vertex, has different implications for direct detection
experiments and gives rise to distinct collider signatures. We find that the
region of parameter space where dark matter has the right abundance to be a
thermal relic is in general within reach of current direct detection
experiments. We focus on a class of models where dark matter carries tau
flavor, and show that the collider signals of these models include events with
four or more isolated leptons and missing energy. A full simulation of the
signal and backgrounds, including detector effects, shows that in a significant
part of parameter space these theories can be discovered above Standard Model
backgrounds at the Large Hadron Collider. We also study the extent to which
flavor and charge correlations among the final state leptons allows models of
this type to be distinguished from theories where dark matter couples to
leptons but does not carry flavor.
