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Viral Milk Duct Photo Everyone's Losing It Over Isn't Entirely Accurate

Why do people find it "deeply distressing," anyway?
A viral photo of the female anatomy is making the rounds online.
Twitter/lemonadead
A viral photo of the female anatomy is making the rounds online.

Any breastfeeding mom who's accidentally squirted milk across a room or soaked clear through their shirt probably already suspected that her breasts are chock full of milk ducts.

But the internet is still shook by a viral photo of the female anatomy that claims to show clusters of flower-like ducts, even thought it's not entirely accurate.

"I just realized I never saw a photo of a female muscle system. This is NOT what I imagined milk ducts to look like," a Twitter user who goes by the name of "Artist formerly known as Byeonce" posted last Sunday.

"How are some of you finding this beautiful? I'm legit STRESSED knowing this is inside my titties," she continued in another tweet.

The photo, which USA Today says appears to be pulled from an iPad app called Anatomy & Physiology, has now been re-tweeted more than 46,000 times. And people have been freaking out, calling it "deeply distressing," "terrifying," or saying that it "made my skin crawl."

But people can stop now.

No seriously, please stop. Even if this photo were completely accurate (which, again, it's not), all it's showing is the female body and what makes it able to feed our babies AND KEEP THEM NOURISHED USING MILK WE MAKE OURSELVES. A lot of women have pointed out that's not "deeply distressing" at all.

But also, just like a lot of things on the internet, we shouldn't take the pic as fact. A number of experts have pointed out the inaccuracies with the photo. Lactation consultant "Milk Maven" in Texas pointed out in another viral post that women actually have far fewer milk ducts than the picture implies — more like nine, she wrote on Facebook.

"Milk ducts are not arranged in a pretty flower shape, they are more like the intertwined roots of a tree," she wrote.

A 2005 study in the Journal of Anatomy confirms that the average number of milk ducts per breast may indeed be more like nine, while many older medical texts show more like 15-20 lobes and milk ducts. The authors created a more accurate depiction of the lactating breast, which you can check out here.

Also, the petal-like ducts that have collectively made the internet flip out are actually not ducts at all. They're lobes, Motherly points out.

"That's where the body makes the milk, which then travels down those little tubes (those are the ducts) to the nipple," Motherly reports.

"There's nothing scary about it, in fact, it's kind of magical."

WATCH: What you should know about your nipples. Story continues below.

The picture also makes it seem like the lobes are made of muscle, which is not true. They're encased in breast tissue and fat, Eric Rodriguez, the managing editor of InnerBody, told USA Today.

"Lobes are not muscle, and thats probably my biggest gripe with (the) photo," Rodriguez said. "Most organs, when you depict them, tend to be red because it's the color of blood, but when you put it together like this it looks like we have these flower muscles on our breasts and that's not the case."

Finally, the size and shape of the lobes will vary depending on whether a woman is lactating or not, Science Alert points out. Dr. Donald Matz, the chair of the anatomy department at Des Moines University, told USA today that the glands would be smaller in a non-lactating woman.

So please, people of the internet: take a deep breast and calm down.

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