This photo of what women’s milk ducts actually look like just went viral

Just wow.

Being pregnant and giving birth and breastfeeding both my babies, it all gave me a whole new level of respect and admiration, not just for my own body, but for women’s bodies in general.

I mean – when you stop and think about it – growing and birthing an actual human, producing enough food (breast milk) for them to grow and thrive and develop – women’s bodies really are a work of art, no?

In fact, how astonishing our bodies really are was high lighted again this week, when a picture showing what women’s milk ducts actually look like went viral.

The image, which is an illustration showing the female muscle system, quickly gathered attention, with many claiming they never knew what what women’s milk ducts actually look like.

I just realized I never saw a photo of a female muscle system. This is NOT what I imagined milk ducts to look like. pic.twitter.com/GBK6trgXF8

— Artist formerly known as Byeonce (@lemonadead) April 21, 2019

At present, almost 140,000 people are talking about this image which shows milk ducts in their unskinned form. The clusters of milk ducts look like flowers, and Twitter is quite literally freaking out.

“At first I thought someone put flowers over boobs because art. Now, it looks like a weird alien creature lives inside my body and I’m terrified,” wrote one woman whose tweet has been liked thousands of times.

Another one wrote:

“It looks like those water balloons where all you have to do it attach the hose then 100 water balloons fill up.”

Mystified as the internet may be by how complex and truly amazing the female body is, those petal-like structures aren’t actually the milk ducts, those are lobes, which contain the alveoli, which is where the body makes the milk. The breast milk then travels down those little tubes (those are the ducts) to the nipple. Where your baby can drink it. Magic? Yes, it really sort of is.