It is a truly extraordinary relationship between butterflies and bees from the Amazon rainforest and turtles. The Amazon region is notoriously lacking in sodium due to its great distance from the sea and because the Andes range blocks minerals carried by the west wind.
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves him
It is a truly extraordinary relationship that between butterflies and bees from the Amazon rainforest and turtles. The Amazon region is notoriously lacking in sodium due to its great distance from the sea and because the Andes range blocks minerals carried by the west wind.
So, if you were a butterfly or a bee, where would you find one readily available source of salt in the Amazon? The answer is not very obvious, unless you look at the photos in the gallery that portray a turtle surrounded by butterflies, which point straight at her eyes.
Scientist Phil Torres, a Cornell University graduate who conducts research at the Tambopata Research Center in Peru, tells LiveScience that butterflies are aextracted from the sodium of the tortoise's tears.
Turtles, in fact, have a sufficient amount of sodium from their diet, because they are not herbivores like butterflies. This is the only region where this phenomenon has been observed.
Other salt sources for Amazonian butterflies (which are not that interesting and picturesque) include urine, puddles of water, and human sweat. The turtle, however, does not seem happy to give his tears and it tries to chase away the insects with its slow movements.
Roberta Ragni
Credit: Jeff Cremer / Perunature.com
