If someone is crying in an endeavour to fake remorse or empathy , we say they are shedding “ crocodile teardrop . ” But how and why did we start pegging insincere displays of emotion to the toothy reptile ?
The extraction may have become popular around the 14th century when a bestselling memoir , The Voyage and Travel of Sir John Mandeville , referenced serpents who sob while use up their human victims :
In the centuries since , crying crocodile have become a metaphor for trivial remorse . The reflexion been used as a fable to teach earnest repentance , by Shakespeare to convey false grief , and , more recently , by medium mockingtearful politiciansormurder suspect .
In 2007,University of Florida animal scientist Kent Vliet actually provedthat the animals do son of a bitch while snack . But because crocodile eat while in the weewee — making a study of their meal - time tears difficult — he studied their close relatives , caiman and alligators , who might dine on dry ground . Out of the seven he film eating at a Florida gator park , five teared up before , during , and after eat up .
Vliet ’s theory is that when the animals enthusiastically smack their jaws , the motility ram air through the crocodiles ’ venous sinus and in the end empties tears into their eye . Their eyes not only water but can froth and house of cards , as Vliet witnessed at the gator park , where some even bust up in anticipation of their meal of chick , quail , and feed cooky .
Vliet was ask to investigate the biology behind the “ crocodilian metaphor ” by Malcolm Shaner , a UCLA brain doctor research a phenomenon in which somefacial palsy sufferers outcry when they chew . doctor often relate to this eye - watering consideration as “ crocodile bout , ” and a 1920s Russian scientist once suggested that such weakened facial muscles allowed , in the Word of Vliet , " older , mayhap crocodilian neurological pathways to emerge " in humans .
