There's a zoo full of critters living on your skin. Consider your underarm a rain forest…… Scientists decoded the genes of 112,000 bacteria [gated, but with abstract] in samples taken from a mere 20 spots on the skin of 10 people. Those numbers translated into roughly 1,000 strains, or species, of bacteria…..hundreds more than ever have been found on skin largely because the project used newer genetic techniques to locate them.