A cockroach drank the tears of a lizard and the photo went around the networks

Professionalism and love for what it does, combined with the ability to adjust the camera lens to the right place at the right time. Maybe the Spanish photographer Javier Aznar González de Rueda He would never have imagined that with his ability to immortalize moments, he could be known around the world for his last great work.

It turns out that while the man was in the middle of the Ecuadorian Amazon looking to capture images of nature with his camera, he decided to pay attention to a species of small lizard called a slender anole (Anolis fuscoauratus). By “turning more finely” in his search for the small processes and details that occur in the natural environment, the photographer realized that in the tear duct of the reptile, there was nothing less than a cockroach. which fed on its secretions.

Indeed, the insect of red color swallowed its tears, a resource that cockroaches and other small critters have called tearphagia and which consists in being able to feed on the secretions of the largest animal. It is also a process that other insects, such as moths and butterflies, perform on turtles, crocodiles, lizards, and birds.

The truth is that the unusual and specific image was shared on social networks and later noticed by the scientist from Madrid Matthijs P. van den Burg, of the Museum of Natural Sciences of this city. The scientist had started a study on the behavior of cockroaches; insect of which it is known to this day, at least 4500 varieties of 500 different genera.

As the Spanish scientist who investigates cockroaches explains to the specialist magazine Neotropical biodiversity, these insects “target their predators at night to find these food sources, which could be triggered by the strong competition in the rainforests,” he explained.

The consequence of insects seeking to feed on the secretions of other animals can be negative for them, experts analyze, due to the high risk they present with regard to the transmission of viruses and bacteria.

For the Spanish biologist, the discovery of the process called tearphagia of cockroaches on lizards It is a very difficult phenomenon to observe, even if it allows us to better understand the interactions between species around the world. “We lack this information for most of the species described,” van den Burg concluded, adding that the evidence shows that the concepts carry out this process in their predator both during the day and at night.