Milk ducts: Image of female breast anatomy goes viral

@lemonadead/Twitter Illustration of human milk ducts

Milk Ducts? What are they? Why do they look like that? Do I really have them? I don't want breasts anymore.

That was the reaction on Twitter after one user shared an image of the flower-like muscles.

The milk-making glands are divided into segments and the narrow tubes - or ducts - carry the milk from each segment to the nipple.

But for some that's apparently not common knowledge - which is why many people online seemed to find the picture hard to swallow.

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The image went viral in a matter of days and has more than 130,000 likes and counting.

It's described by the poster on Twitter as a photo but is actually only a figurative illustration from an iPad app called Anatomy & Physiology.

Anatomy & Physiology Illustration of mammary glands

The image shocked some - with a few even saying they felt "creeped out".

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However, it was the act of breastfeeding that broke the ice. Some people managed to see the natural beauty within the flower-like ducts.

Perhaps not surprising, considering a sizeable proportion of the people tweeting may have been breastfed themselves.

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The glands start producing milk after a mother gives birth.

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Some people took the time to question why they had never seen the biological diagram before and had only seen male anatomy pictures in text books and classrooms.

But others saw the funny side to it.

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