In order to emphasize the insincerity of a person’s experiences, the expression “sheds crocodile tears” is often used. Indeed, tears periodically flow from the eyes of crocodiles.
According to ancient legend, crocodiles cry bitter tears while eating a person, mourning the victim. More new theory says in this regard that reptiles specifically moisten their prey with tears to simplify its digestion. But why do crocodiles really cry?
The reason for this phenomenon is far from pity for the victim. This phenomenon can be explained from a scientific point of view, and it is not the feelings that are to blame for crocodile tears, but only the kidneys. This organ in crocodiles is imperfect.
To combat excess salts in the body, reptiles are endowed with special glands that help the kidneys. These glands secrete a solution of salts, and they are located literally right next to the eyes of predators.
At moments when the glands are forced to work at full strength, it seems as if a big, angry crocodile is crying bitter tears, although this is nothing more than a defensive reaction of the reptile’s body.
One could indeed accuse crocodiles of sentimentality, but scientists have absolutely established that the transparent drops coming out of the eyes of crocodiles are nothing more than excess salts, and it is a mistake to consider them tears.
A zoologist made an interesting discovery when he accidentally saw a butterfly fluttering around a crocodile’s head. It turns out that insects benefit from crocodile tears.
People have long noticed that crocodiles, known for their bloodthirstiness, often “cry.” The expression "crocodile tears" is used to describe the behavior of a hypocritical person who pretends to worry about a situation that may be his own fault. But, as it turned out, crocodile tears are just features excretory system, which can also benefit other animals.
Director of the biological station La Selva“In Costa Rica, ecologist Carlos de la Rosa accompanied students on a tour of the Puerto Viejo River and accidentally noticed a bright dryad butterfly and a bee fluttering around a spectacled caiman. The insects did not leave the caiman for a quarter of an hour, and they preferred the eyes to all other parts of the reptile’s head. The scientist thought about the reasons for this strange behavior. When he returned, he began to look for descriptions of similar cases. There were a lot of photos and videos on the Internet where bees and butterflies hovered around crocodiles and turtles. A case was described in which a bee drank “turtle tears” on the banks of the Yasuni River in Ecuador, and in "Journal of the Kansas Entomological Society" a case of lacrophagia (the so-called drinking of tear fluid) was even described in Thailand, when a bee drank a human tear.
According to Carlos de la Rosa, crocodile tears serve as a valuable source of mineral salts for insects, a kind of “energy drink.” The fact is that the excretory system of crocodiles and turtles is designed in such a way that the lacrimal glands ensure the removal of excess salts from the body. Mineral salts dissolved in water are present in excess in sea water, but far from the ocean animals may experience a lack of them and therefore look for such non-standard ways to replenish the missing microelements. Carlos de la Rosa outlined his theory on the pages of the magazine "Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment". It is unknown how insects learned about the peculiarities of the excretory system of reptiles, but, one way or another, a new round has appeared in the cycle of mineral salts in nature.
This is not the first “accidental” discovery in the practice of Carlos de la Rosa. So, one day he discovered the new kind dragonflies, noticing that the insect is on an uncharacteristic plant from the bromeliad family. Before this, only one species of dragonfly living on bromeliads was known, but thanks to the scientist’s observation, there were two. You just have to keep your eyes open and be curious enough to look for and find the reason for the strange things that come your way, de la Rosa said.
It remains to be seen why crocodiles do not object to this consumer attitude from insects, and install chemical composition crocodile tears to understand why reptiles attract insects.
If someone pretends to feel sorry for someone whom he himself has offended, then they say about such an offender: “It pours crocodile tears" In other words, in this case these are insincere tears accompanying hypocritical regret. It's time to find out why the crocodile is crying, because he is bloodthirsty and far from kind.
Ancient peoples feared crocodiles
Some peoples in ancient times discovered that crocodiles had such a dominant character trait as a tendency to deceive. Several thousand years ago in Egypt, these animals that inhabited the Nile were attributed to divine evil. To win the favor of bloodthirsty and treacherous reptiles, local residents please them all possible ways: they gave food, pronounced ritual and magical speeches at them. But they did not understand why crocodiles cry when they eat.
People's imagination had no limits. For example, from a famous ancient Greek researcher you can find the following amusing description of the behavior of a crocodile. Cunning reptile with a mouth full river water she rushed to the steep path to water it abundantly, and then hid in ambush and waited for the victim. It is not difficult to guess what happened to unsuspecting people or animals who went down the slippery slope of the river to quench their thirst. Despite all the fantastic nature of such facts confirming deceit, they are still not so groundless. Why does a crocodile cry while eating? It is possible that he feels sorry for his food.
Old legend
Various sources retell ancient legend about the tearful cry of a crocodile over a mercilessly killed victim, which he immediately feeds on.
From the 9th century, the “Library” survived, on which he worked who lived in Constantinople. In this pseudoscientific work, there was a place for the legend of crying crocodile over the heads of those unfortunates whose remains it swallowed up. The author proposed a rather interesting hypothesis, according to which it is not pity that squeezes the tears out of the crocodile, but the lack of meat in the victim’s skull. This is why crocodiles cry when they eat.
What do the researchers say?
In the 12th century Western Europe appeared treatise Hugo the Victorian, in which too we're talking about about crocodile tears. This theme also appears in later periods.
In 1357, residents of the city of Liege (the territory of modern Belgium) had the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the work “Mandeville’s Travels”. An unknown author in one of the stories talks about how Ethiopian crocodiles cry while eating people.
The 17th century Russian dictionary-reference book “Azbukovnik” did not ignore the topic of crocodile tears. In the section on the crocodile, the description of the animal living in the water is almost no different from that given in the “Library” of Photius. That is, the crocodile cries after having dealt with human body, can’t decide what to do with his head.
Crocodile tears from a Christian perspective
In the Latin and Greek versions of the Physiologists, the image of a crocodile was associated with the concept of hell and the image of the devil. Everything that was put in contrast to him was related to Jesus Christ. Unlike the tears of Christ, crocodile tears in the understanding of Christians are apostasy from the righteous faith. Nevertheless, people never tired of speculating about why the crocodile was crying.
Imperceptibly, starting around the 50s of the 17th century, the expression “crocodile tears” moves from the plane of its relationship with Christian virtue. Allegory is increasingly becoming the subject of sentimentalism, which has appeared in the literature of a new direction. Thus, the Russian fabulist A.K. Mazdorf in his work “Tears of a Crocodile” ridiculed sentimental tearfulness and presented it in an ironic form. But the satirist Erasmus of Rotterdam (“In Praise of Stupidity”) offered his humorous interpretation - a hungry crocodile, seeing a victim, reflexively salivates, which is perceived as tears. It is impossible to say for sure whether a crocodile is crying.
Scientific explanation of the nature of crocodile tears
An attempt to scientifically explain the origin was made by Schmidt-Nilsson and Fange, modern researchers from Sweden. Salts that have accumulated in excess in the body cannot be removed from it through the kidneys. Special glands located in the eye area help cope with this task. Periodically, as needed, they open and the salts leave the body. Nature, in addition to crocodiles, has endowed such “abilities” with some other representatives of this class of animals, namely turtles, iguanas and sea snakes. Now you know why the crocodile cries.
Zoologists from Florida confirmed the proposed theory of their Swedish colleagues through experiments with caimans and alligators. Moreover, the fact of the release of “tears” during a meal was captured by a video camera. This became proof of the scientific theory.
Modern scientists have long wondered whether this is really so, and, after observing these reptiles for some time, they came to the conclusion that they really cry. The only reason for such non-trivial behavior was for a long time is completely incomprehensible, because it is unlikely that crocodiles have such a human character trait as pity.
Crocodiles are predators who do not know pity, since eating other species is their way of life.
Ancient theories
Since ancient times, crocodiles have inspired people with a reverent fear of them, as well as a desire to hide from danger. The inhabitants of Egypt, who were familiar firsthand with the indigenous inhabitants of the Nile waters, called them “divine evil.” In order not to in any way anger the sacred animal, they brought offerings, performed rituals, and also tried in every possible way to please the resourceful reptiles.
Seeing the crocodile's tears during a meal, no one could answer the question: why are they crying? Did you somehow anger the gods? I didn’t want to believe that the crocodiles didn’t like the gifts and honors. There were no limits to the fantasies of our predecessors. For example, one of the Greek researchers put forward a theory that the salty liquid observed in the crocodile's head area is not tears, but water, which he specially took into his mouth to water the path of the victim, and that, in turn, should have slipped and make it easier for reptiles to hunt.
Another interesting assumption was put forward in the 17th century in the reference book "Azbukovnik", which stated that main problem The crocodile, over which he constantly sheds tears, is the question of where to put the victim's head.
Erasmus of Rotterdam also expressed his opinion on this issue. He claimed that the crocodile emanates drool, not tears.
Modern explanation of the phenomenon
The most successful attempt to deal with interesting phenomenon undertaken by Swedish scientists Schmidt-Nilsson and Fange. Having studied the problem, they made the assumption that crocodiles have extremely poor kidney function, one of the main tasks of which is to remove excess salt from the body.
This assumption was studied in detail by US zoologists from the state of Florida, and subsequently confirmed by experimental studies. It was found that nature provides a special salt gland right next to the reptile’s eyes, which, as needed, comes into play, helping salt deposits leave the body.
What is noteworthy is that other reptiles have similar abilities: iguanas, turtles, sea snakes.
Why are pseudotears secreted during meals? It's very simple: when chewing, additional irritation of the lingual glands occurs, which causes tearing. The problem with this phenomenon is that crocodiles, due to special structure jaws cannot chew in the usual sense of the word, but capture and flatten their food, swallowing large pieces. Even a person coughs when eating this type of food, and there is also tearing.
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