Lachryphagy, Ophthalmotropy and Mud-Puddling: Wonders of Nature

Lepidoptera (Moths and Butterflies) have devised some unique way of gathering liquid nutrients. One of the unique ways of getting the required nutrients is through mud-puddling. It generally happens on wet soil. We all have seen pictures of thousands of butterflies assembling over muddy puddles or soggy places. From the liquid that they suck from these wet sources they obtain salts, amino acids that are necessary for their physiology, their natural behavior and ecology. There are more unusual ways that these insects gather nutrients, for example the butterfly species ‘halpe’ gets attracted to the sweat on human bodies, and some more of the unusual sources of getting nutrients are blood and tears. Mud-puddling amongst butterflies seems to be more common with male butterflies than the females. Study shows that the males benefit from the sodium uptake from the mud-puddling with more reproductive success. The male butterflies also pass on the collected amino acids and salt with the spermatophore during the mating almost as a nuptial gift which enhances the survival of the eggs.

However, the most fascinating of all is lachryphagy, or the drinking tears. In the western Amazon it is a fairly common sight, Julia butterflies hitch hiking on the turtles head. Well they aren’t really hitchhiking rather drinking the tears from the eyes of the turtle. This phenomenon is known as lachryphagy. Butterflies and bees and moths need salt for egg production and their metabolism which is not available in the nectar that they drink. So these insects have devised this unique method to gather the nutrients that they require. The drinking of tears is not restricted to just turtles, the butterflies and moths are found drinking tears from the eyes of a torpid caiman or crocodiles sunbathing on the shores.

Recently a rare sighting has made into the headlines, with a moth dipping its proboscis in the eyes of a bird in the dark of the night and drinking its tears. A rare sighting fact is that birds are seldom in a torpid state.  In this instance not moving because at night the black-chinned ant bird as recorded must have been in a torpid state which happens when they lower their body temperatures while resting thus becoming virtually immobile.

Though these animals lose nothing letting the Lepidoptera drink their tears, infections cannot be ruled out from dipping proboscis. 

By: Madhuchanda Saxena

Content: https://www.livescience.com/63706-moth-drinks-bird-tears.html