Why belly buttons? "It was a fun way to reach out to the public and teach them about the ecology and evolution of everyday life," says Rob Dunn, PhD, an associate professor of biology at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, who led the study. In other words, the navel is a novel, attention-getting device to study science.

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He says the belly button is a fun habitat filled with living organisms that we don't know much about. It's less exposed and gets washed less often than other areas of skin, so the bacterial community in the umbilicus is less disturbed