Amazonian Butterflies Drink Turtle Tears

 

Personaly, it looks like the butterflies are the cause of the tears.. Maybe they learnt to irritate the hell out of the turtles through boredom or something and found they could make the eyes water. After all, the butterflies have no concept they are drinking from a turtles eye..they just know that if they touch this object, tears appear..

Butterflies in the Amazon have been observed flocking onto the heads of turtles to drink their tears, which provide the animals with a vital source of the mineral sodium. Credit: Jeff Cremer / Perunature.com View full size image

The sight of butterflies flocking onto the heads of yellow-spotted river turtles in the western Amazon rain forest is not uncommon, at least if one is able to sneak up on the skittish reptiles. But the reason why butterflies congregate onto the turtles may be stranger than you think: to drink their tears.

The butterflies are likely attracted to the turtles’ tears because the liquid drops contain salt, specifically sodium, an important mineral that is scant in the western Amazon, said Phil Torres, a scientist who does much of his research at the Tambopata Research Center in Peru and is associated with Rice University.

Unlike butterflies, turtles get plenty of sodium through their largely carnivorous diet. Meat contains significant levels of the salt, Torres told LiveScience. But herbivores sometimes struggle to get enough sodium and other minerals, he added. “They end up needing this extra mineral source,” he said.

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Amazonian Butterflies Drink Turtle Tears