What lives there old

Armpit bacteria plating

We have stuck our swabs and noses under more than a thousand armpits. Below are armpit bacteria on blood agar plates. The advantage of such plates is the easy distinction between different bacteria: some will create a light zone due to the breakdown of hemoglobin, others will create a dark zone due to coagulation and yet other bacteria will not create a zone around them, but will profile themselves in another way.

The legend represents the participant reference number, gender and hedonic value. The hedonic value is determined by a trained odor panel and represents the pleasantness of the smell on a scale of -8 (very unpleasant) to 0 (neutral) to +8 (very pleasant).