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Arianne P. Oriá

The dried tears of a roadside hawk. Crystallisation is a common practice to evaluate eye disease in people.

Crystals in the tears of a broad-snouted caiman are more distant from each other than in the other study species.

A scientist takes a tear sample from a barn owl.

The broad-snouted caiman can go without blinking for hours, which inspired the new research.

A barn owl's tears appear much different than reptile tears when crystallised.

A loggerhead sea turtle's dried tears show a unique pattern when crystallised. These patterns varied widely among the species, one of the biggest surprises in the research.