10 Interesting and Creepy Facts About Collecting Tears
From sadness to happiness to cutting onions, all kinds of things can bring tears to people's eyes. And while most consider nothing more than salt water to wipe away their tears, some curious people collect them instead. For the most part, they're the usual suspects: scientists, artists, and entrepreneurs — people who are naturally inclined to study the properties and uses of things that everyone else ignores, even if those things are bodily fluids. Have substance.
And they're giving new meaning to the phrase “I'll give you something to cry about.” Thanks to them, tears may one day be widely used in life-saving tests, powering new technologies, or making traditional foods and drinks even more unique and personal. Here are ten of the most bizarre, fantastic, and crazy stories about why people have or don't have tears.
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10 Tears can be collected to monitor health
It would be more scientifically accurate to call tears filtered blood rather than salt water. They contain traces of glucose and other chemicals and enzymes found in blood, so scientists naturally began to wonder whether they could discover markers of disease in tears. It seems the answer is yes. People literally leak information.
Markers of many terrible diseases, including cancer and Parkinson's, can be found in tears. Technology already exists that enables the use of tears as an alternative to mammograms in breast cancer screening. In addition to diseases, traces of environmental pollution and drug abuse have also been found in rats' tears.
These are important discoveries, because unlike blood samples, tears can be collected by non-invasive methods. A small amount of it is always present in people's eyes, which means they have the potential to be used for continuous health monitoring. One organization that looks into this is NASA. In 2018, he suggested that astronauts' tears could be used to learn more about the effects of long periods of time in space on human health.(1)
9 These were probably not collected during mourning in the past
Modern scientific testing has cast doubt on many of the common claims made about tear collection practices in the past. They surround a type of narrow glass bottle, often beautifully decorated, called a “lachrymatory” or “tear catcher”.
The presence of these bottles in ancient Greek and Roman tombs led people to believe that they must be associated with mourning, so a story developed that mourners would cry into these bottles and then bury them with the body. It was said that they were a symbol of the person's status – many tears being shed after death meant that they would have been highly respected in life.
It is also said that the Victorians used bottles when mourning. They would fill the bottle with tears, and the day all the tears evaporated was the day their period of mourning would end. However, scholars have a less romantic explanation: they were perfume bottles.
The stories were probably the result of clever marketing by those who wanted to sell them. However, it must have worked because many people today buy them thinking they are tear catchers and possibly use them to catch tears.(2)
8 Tears can be used to create bitterness
One of the strangest uses of tears ever is to make a bottle of bitters even more bitter. Emotionally, that is. It was the idea of food art firm Bompas & Parr, which held a workshop in 2015 to teach people how to create bitters from their own tears. However, he promised that the impact of tears on the taste of the drink would be minimal.
The unusual ingredient was described as an “emotional infusion” that would overpower the alcohol and other herbs and spices. Drinkers can be assured that it will not be like drinking saline solution. To ensure that workshop attendees would actually be able to shed some tears, the team set up a “relaxation corner” and kept some of the menthol tear sticks commonly used by actors on hand.
Interestingly, this project was partly inspired by the lachrymatory myth. Yet, these bitters were not created to mourn or wallow in one's sorrow. Instead, it was suggested that they be given as Christmas gifts.(3)
7 Bottled tears helped promote mental health awareness
The fame that comes with reality television can be difficult to maintain. Even when they are on popular shows, contestants chosen from the public usually have very little time to exploit their fame before they fade out of the public consciousness. .
In 2017, Chris Hughes, a British farmer, rose to fame after starring in the hit show love islandIt seems he's making the most of his new-found celebrity by launching his own unique brand of mineral water. According to the bottle's label, “L'Eau de Chris”, was “mineral water infused with the tears of Chris Hughes.” The bizarre product was unveiled in a black-and-white promotional video on Hughes' social media, which showed tears streaming down his cheeks and falling into the bottle.
Some people were naturally disappointed and questioned whether this could be healthy. However, they had nothing to fear. The teardrops were revealed the next day as a publicity stunt to promote World Mental Health Day. In another video, Hughes talked about how ridiculous it is that men bottle up their emotions every day.(4)
6 noah cyrus tears trick
Chris Hughes wasn't the only one joking about selling his bottled tears. In 2018, singer Noah Cyrus saw a way to turn her difficult breakup with rapper Lil Xan into a marketing opportunity. Billy Ray's daughter and Miley's sister released a series of merchandise referencing her grief and broken heart. This included a T-shirt bearing her famous father's face with the words “pain, brokenness,” but the thing that made the most headlines was a bottle of her tears, which cost an eye-watering $12,000.
While it's not entirely unbelievable that a celebrity would bottle up her tears and sell them – Scarlett Johansson once auctioned off a used tissue, and William Shatner sold a kidney stone – it's totally unbelievable. Was a stunt. Noah probably didn't expect that anyone would try to buy them. However, the young singer underestimated the power of parasocial relationships. One of his fans started a GoFundMe campaign to purchase the bottle and received over $1,000 in donations. Cyrus had to step in, reimbursing those people and offering them backstage passes to her show.(5)
5 Tears have been used to make cheese
Synthetic biology is a branch of science that deals with how living things can be changed to give them new characteristics. They can be big things, like animals, or small things, like bacteria and viruses. The sector could support a variety of industries, including medicine, farming and cheese manufacturing.
The year 2013 saw a collaboration between American scientist Christina Agapakis and Norwegian fragrance expert Sissel Tolas. He collected bacteria from human bodies, which he grew in milk to make cheese. Some of it came from the tears of artist Olafur Eliasson, while some of it came from writer Michael Pollan's navel.
The cheeses are said to smell like the body odor of their donors, and if they were meant to be eaten they would even taste like them. However, they were part of a display in the Science Gallery in Dublin aimed at helping people overcome cultural fears about microbes and drawing attention to the potential of bacteria.(6)
4 New pepper spray?
Well, no one is really suggesting that shedding tears on someone would be a good way to defend against an attacker. However, research as of 2023 has shown that tears have a self-defense quality, or at least women's tears. Studies have shown that male aggression can be reduced by 43.7% if they smell women's tears, and this effect occurs because tears change their brain activity.
The tears used in the study were collected from volunteer donors who could cry easily. Because the study specifically wanted to use emotional tears, women were asked to watch a sad film clip once per day for 25 days and collect their tears in a vial. If this sounds like a lot, it's because the amount of tears people produce in one crying episode is not very large. Only 1.6ml from the average donation. received.
This may explain why most research on sociochemical signals in humans has focused on sweat. The results of the study match results already found in rats, leading scientists to suggest that tears may help reduce aggression in all mammals.(7)
3 collecting tears on canvas
It took six women to cry enough tears to use in a study of aggression, but Argentinian artist Leandro Granato shed an incredible 800 milliliters of tears alone to create one of his paintings. It's not because he needs to delve into the depths of his psyche or grapple with some devastating tragedy to find inspiration. In fact, he is not limited to true emotional tears. There is only one condition for collecting his tears – he needs to contain color in his tears.
He achieves this by smelling the color with his nose. When he was a child, he noticed that he could force fluid put into his nose out of his eye. Instead of just crying, he could actually expel color from his eyes, thus creating the abstract splatters that are characteristic of his paintings. Apparently, when he decided to make a living using this technique, which he called eye painting, even his family thought he was crazy. However, his paintings have sold for more than $1,000.(8)
2 topography of tears
Another visual artist who spent years collecting her tears is photographer Rose-Lynn Fisher. After losing a friend with whom she had reconnected after many years, Fischer was sad and grateful for the short time they spent together. Naturally, there were a lot of tears, and one day, she suddenly felt curious to see what her tears looked like up close.
He collected a tear on a glass slide and magnified it 100 times using a microscopy camera, and the result resembled a bird's-eye view of a strange land. She spent the next ten years carrying slides with her to collect tear samples whenever she cried, whether from sadness, joy, or while cutting onions.
However, not every tear was worthy of a place in the project. Fischer nevertheless exercised his artistic sensibility and published only what he found to be the most meaningful and visually interesting photographs. In this project titled “Topography of Tears”, Fischer depicted his “emotional sphere”.(9)
1 Smart contact lenses could be powered by tears
Creating augmented reality using headsets and handheld devices may still seem like a recent development, but thanks to researchers at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, things may be moving forward rapidly. They created a tiny battery that would be perfect for powering smart contact lenses. This is because it can be charged using tears, meaning it can theoretically charge itself during use.
The battery is less than a millimeter thick, but can generate enough power to power a device for a day. Although it has been known for some time that the lysozyme protein found in tears can generate electricity if placed under sufficient pressure, the Singapore team's battery does not use it.
Instead, they use sodium and chloride ions which are also present in tears. Another advantage is that the batteries are bio-compatible, meaning they are made from materials that are safe for human eyes. Despite electricity, they do not require metal wires.(10)
