Ever wondered what’s on your child’s hands? The answer is A LOT of germs.

The Facebook page from the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) has shared a photo of a petri dish showing the flourishing microbial colonies present on a child’s hand.

The handprint of a child after playing outside. Photo: Tasha Sturm, Cabrillo College via ASM

Tasha Sturm, a laboratory technician at Cabrillo College in California, pressed her eight-year-old son’s hand into a bacterial culture plate after he had been playing outside, allowed the bacteria to grow in the nutrient-rich agar for 48 hours and then captured the image.

She then shared the oddly beautiful, if somewhat disturbing, results on the ARM’s MircrobeWorld.org.

Sturm speculates that the white colonies are probably a form of Staphylococcus, a bacteria that exists in people’s noses and skin.

“I used to do my daughter’s hand until her hand became too big for the large plates and then started doing my son,” she wrote in an email to Smart News.

“I save the plates and give it to the instructors to use as a demo for the class.”

“My kids think it is ‘cool’ and the students like it as well.”