Your showerhead and toothbrush are teeming with viruses [Video]

The warm, damp environments of your showerhead and toothbrush are the perfect breeding ground for microbes, and a new study has identified hundreds of viruses that live there, showing the vast biodiversity to be found in the average home. Related video above: Should you get rid of your toothbrush after being sick?These viruses, however, are not the kind that will give you the common cold or flu (or worse). Called bacteriophages, or phages for short, they are the natural enemy of bacteria. Each tiny, tripod-looking phage has evolved to hunt, attack and gobble up a specific bacterial species.”The number of viruses that we found is absolutely wild,” Erica Hartmann, an associate professor at Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering who led the study, said in a statement. “We found many viruses that we know very little about and many others that we have never seen before. It’s amazing how much-untapped …