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An interesting study claims nearly 80 million bacteria are transmitted between partners during a ten second French kiss.

According to Time, researchers at Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) collected data on kissing frequency from 21 couples. They then took tongue swabs to examine the composition of microbes before and after a kiss. The results showed that the couples had more similar salivary microbiota after a ten-second kiss.

"Intimate kissing involving full tongue contact and saliva exchange appears to be a courtship behavior unique to humans and is common in over 90% of known cultures. Interestingly, the current explanations for the function of intimate kissing in humans include an important role for the microbiota present in the oral cavity, although to our knowledge, the exact effects of intimate kissing on the oral microbiota have never been studied," Remco Kort of TNO, in a press release.

"We wanted to find out the extent to which partners share their oral microbiota, and it turns out, the more a couple kiss, the more similar they are."

To quantify the amount of microbes transferred, researchers then asked one of the partners to take a probiotic drink containing known bacteria and kiss, BBC reported. On examination of tongue and saliva of the couples, researchers found that bacteria in probiotic were transferred to other partner along with a host of other microbes numbering 80 million.

Based on data provided by the couples, researchers also concluded that couples who kissed as many as nine times or more, had more similar bacteria in saliva but did not find an association between kissing frequency and tongue microbiota.

Researchers also noted that men reported a frequency of kissing higher than their partners.

"Seventy four percent of the men reported higher intimate kiss frequencies than the women of the same couple. This resulted in a reported average of ten kisses per day from the males, twice that of the female reported average of five per day," researchers wrote.