May 31 2009
Fun Science Fact: Your Armpit is a Tropical Environment
Warm, moist, and abundant in food (body oils and whatnot): why wouldn’t an armpit be a rich environment? A new study on the human skin’s microbiome has found that the biggest influence on the diversity of life found on your skin (bacteria and other unicellular microbes) is . . . drum roll please . . . location, location, location.
For example, the bacteria that live under your arms likely are more similar to those under another person’s arm than they are to the bacteria that live on your forearm.
Hopefully you find this tidbit of information to be more interesting than creepy. Yes, you are an organism that lives and feeds in an environment. And yes, you are also an environment for a host of organisms that live and feed off of you.
Hmm. If a person believes that all life is sacred, should that person never take a shower? Talk about attempting gene-o-cide. . . .
