A furtive moth slurps up this sleeping bird's tears
Deep in the Amazon jungle, ecologist Leandro Moraes filmed a moth sucking the tears out of a sleeping antbird's eye.
The delicately-performed nighttime feeding is a rarely seen event, wrote Moraes in a report about the experience, entitled "Please, more tears: a case of a moth feeding on antbird tears in central Amazonia."
The short clip depicts a moth carefully dipping its tubular mouth into the bird's closed eye. For a brief moment, the antbird opens its eye, but doesn't seem to notice the large insect perched on its back -- nor the tube resting in its eyeball.
Consuming the tears of other animals is called lachryphagy, and has previously been witnessed in bees and butterflies consuming the tears of formidable predators: crocodiles.
Stealthily sucking another animal's tears is apparently a risk worth taking. In an intensely-competitive natural world, tears are a rich source of salts and nutrients. Sleep carefully.
Mark was the science editor at Mashable. After working as a ranger with the National Park Service, he started a reporting career after seeing the extraordinary value in educating people about the happenings on Earth, and beyond.
He's descended 2,500 feet into the ocean depths in search of the sixgill shark, ventured into the halls of top R&D laboratories, and interviewed some of the most fascinating scientists in the world.
