According to a new study, women have a greater variety of bugs on their hands than on men.

Professor Rob knight, who co-authored the study, says: “The thing that is quite astonishing is the variability between individuals and hands on the same individuals.

The lead author of the study, Noah Fierer says: “The number of bacteria species found on the study participants hands was a big surprise and similarly the greater diversity of bacteria was found on women hands.”

The researchers are not certain why do women harbor a greater variety of bugs than men, but Fierer says that it can be due to acidity of the skin and usually men have a more acidic skin than women.

Similarly, difference in sweat and oil gland production, cosmetic applications, skin thickness, hormone production and the frequency of moisturizer may be some other possibilities.

In the study, the researchers gathered samples from the palms of 51 college students (102 hands) and they tested the samples with a highly detailed system to detect bacteria DNA.

Overall, the researchers identified 4,742 species of bacteria and only 5 of them were found on every hand. Their report has been published on Monday’s online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of sciences.

The researchers found that the average hand seemed to harbor 150 species of bacteria.