photo credit: Daniela Vladimirova via photopin cc
Belly Button Biodiversity Project. Wildlife Of Your Body
1,458 Bacteria Species ‘New to Science’ Found in Our Belly Buttons – James Hamblin – The Atlantic.
From the article
Last month, the group published the results of their first of many experiments, in which they swabbed 60 belly buttons and identified a total of 2,368 species of bacteria. People’s individual profiles were snowflake-ily, bacterially unique.
As the BBB understands it, like exploring the depths of our majestic oceans, there’s much to be learned from our belly button hangers-on. National Geographic reported that 1,458 of the species “may be new to science,” and some of the bacteria were entirely out of their known context. One person’s belly button “harbored a bacterium that had previously been found only in soil from Japan,” where he had never been. Another had two types of “extremophile bacteria that typically thrive in ice caps and thermal vents.”
Who could have thought that belly buttons could be so interesting…….
Funnily enough though, the navel does hold a slight fascination for me at the moment. My own at least!
I cannot remember having an “inny” belly button when younger and for as many years as I care to remember I had an umbilical hernia. This was corrected by surgery last year. So yes..I have been doing a little bit of navel gazing of late..at my nice new “inny”!
Trivia:
Omphalophobia is the fear of belly buttons.
Alfred Hitchcock did not have a belly button. It was eliminated when he was sewn up after surgery.
Navel Gazing - Excessive introspection, self-absorption, or concentration on a single issue. Why the navel I wonder?
Tortellini literally means the belly button of Venus (the Roman Goddess of Love,the Greek equivalent of Aphrodite) because of the shape of it. As the legend goes, Venus and Jupiter were going to get together one night. When Venus checked into the inn, the chef found out. He went to her room, and peeked through the keyhole and saw Venus there laying half naked in bed on her back, and when the chef saw her navel, he was inspired to rush to the kitchen to create a stuffed pasta that looked like her navel, and you have the legend of the famous tortellina (tortellini is plural).
Belly button Facts Lots of belly button info
Adam & Eve – Lucas Cranach The Elder. What’s wrong with this picture then?
Related articles
- What Lives in Your Belly Button? Study Finds “Rain Forest” of Species (news.nationalgeographic.com)
- Your Belly Button is Like a Rainforest, and Here’s Why (healthyhighway.wordpress.com)
- The Ecological Diversity of Your Belly Button (neatorama.com)
- Belly button samples reveal wonderland of fluffy fauna (newscientist.com)
Quite interesting, amusing and informative – made me look at mine now and would be thinking more on that later!
Jo