This is belly button bacteria. Gross right? Who wants that living in their belly button? Not Me!

The original belly button bacteria breakdown, started 2 years ago. It all came from an idea for a holiday card. An under-colleague was sampling colleague’s navel bacteria. Which then got North Carolina University thinking…

There really isn’t a better way to get people interested in science then telling people about their own skin. And bellybuttons were just about ridiculous enough to get the public interested. Given the belly button’s spot on the human body it is rarely washed. So that gave scientist the chance to get a look at what could be growing on humans skin if we did not bathe.

The researchers gave a swab to over 60 volunteers to get a bacterial swipe. Back at the lab the began to look at their bacterial gatherings. And that was just the beginning…

Just from 60 belly-buttons they found 2,368 species of bacteria. 1,458 of which may be new to scientific bacterial study. With all the different bacteria substances made the belly button look like a rain forest.

Some belly-buttons, had 29 species of bacteria. Others had up to 107 different species.

Another, more fragrant individual, who hadn’t washed in several years, (that is just truly disgusting) hosted two species of so-called extremophile bacteria. That would typically thrive in ice caps.  The difference in the bacteria between innies and outies has yet to become public.

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