Looking at this picture and thinking. The importance of handwashing cannot be overemphasised. Behold some of the bacteria that grew when an 8-year-old boy who had been playing outside pressed his hand onto a large Petri dish. The photo received lots of buzz after his mom posted it on Microbe World.
Tasha Sturm, who worked as a microbiology lab tech at Cabrillo College in Aptos, California, was used to seeing students swab objects like cell phones and door knobs for germs as part of basic experiments.
“It’s partly to show that there are microbes everywhere,” Sturm told TODAY in 2015, noting her two kids enjoyed replicating some of the tests at home and that her son had been particularly interested in checking out what was on his hands.
In the spring of 2015, when he was getting ready for school, Sturm asked him to play outside and pet the family dog. When the boy came back in, she had an agar plate — a sterile Petri dish filled with a substance used to grow bacteria — ready. After he gently put his hand onto the plate, Sturm incubated the dish at body temperature for a day or so and then let it sit out at room temperature.
By the time she took the photo, the bacteria had been growing for about a week.