It’s amazing how much the lives of the creatures around us rely on each other for their survival. One example of this is the interaction between butterflies and crocodiles or turtles. Butterflies need to consume sodium and other similar minerals for their metabolism and egg production. Their primary source of food, nectar, doesn’t have a lot of these minerals or salt, so how else are they supposed to find them? By consuming the tears of reptiles.

 

These butterflies will actually land on a crocodile or turtle and drink their tears in order to get what they need. They can also be found doing the same thing with sweat off of humans, muddy riverbanks, animal urine, and more. On the other hand, crocodiles also need to regulate the amount of salt in their bodies, but since they live in saltwater environments and take in sea water with their food, they need to get rid of some of that salt, which they do by using their special ‘salt glands’. So the parasitic relationship between these two is actually beneficial to them both; the butterflies get to consume the salt that they need, and the crocodiles get help in getting rid of their excess salt.

 

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