Cooties are real! Women have more germs than men!

It's a good thing I got my cootie shot in the 2nd grade. From New Scientist:

Ladies, your hands are a zoo. Sampling the bacterial DNA on human skin has revealed that while women's hands get washed more often than men's, they teem with a more diverse selection of germs.

What's more, the average person's hands probably carry at least 3000 different bacteria belonging to more than 100 species. This startling cornucopia may make it possible to tell which objects have been touched by someone, just by looking at the bacteria left behind.

[...] Unexpectedly, women had different bacteria from men and significantly more kinds, even though women reported washing hands more often; bacterial diversity needs time to recover when hands are washed. In a follow-up experiment, the team tracked eight people after they washed their hands. Some bacteria preferred clean hands, other types showed up much later, but men always had fewer types of bacteria on their hands.