I have an invalid ruby hash stored in my db or is it just a serialized hash?

Rails
1

I have the following stored in my by columb named data basically a columb of type text

---
:carts:
  4350: 5700
:teachers:
  4350:
    :teacher_id: 786
    :user_id: 3117

When this gets queried in ruby this auto converts to a ruby hash. How ? Or is this just a serialized hash ?