You're going to want to wash your hands after reading this: There's a new study out that finds thousands of species of bacteria live on the human hand, with the average hand hosting 150 species of bacteria.
In addition, according to the study, women have a greater variety of bacteria on their hands than men do -- and both men and women have more types of bacteria than researchers were expecting to find.
In the research, published in Monday's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers took samples from the palms of 51 college students and identified 4,742 species of bacteria -- including five species which were present on every hand.
Researchers aren't sure why women's hands harbored more variety of bacteria than men's. One theory: Men generally have more acidic skin than women.
