What purpose do tears serve

Factual Questions
1

I attended a funeral recently, and being around the crying for all that time got me thinking. Why do people cry? Im not looking for “because your sad” or anything like that, but how does crying help one survive any better?

2

What makes you think it has to? Not every single aspect of the human body has an evolutionary purpose. Maybe it’s just survival neutral, and there’s no survival pressure against it. Maybe it’s a by-product of some other system that does confer a benefit.

3

This is from memory, so no cite - sorry.

Most of our basic emotions serve some kind of survival trait. With tears, it’s communicating a state of mind to other humans. Group dynamics and coöperation was crucial for our survival as a species, so it’s not that strange that laughter (signaling joy) and tears help that droup dynamic. IIRC, one very strong point in our evolution was when our faces changed sowe started showing the white of the eyes. This helps a lot in wordless communication, and I think were the only animal that has eyes like that.

4

here is a link to a paper written by a person who seems to have had some time to think about the question: http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/biology/b103/f03/web3/n1kaim.html

5

Tears contain lysozyme, an antibacterial enzyme, but I’m guessing that’s not what you meant.

6

I’m with muttrox.

All the labored rationalizations to the contrary, there is no reason to think there’s any survival advantage whatever. People try to justify this belief in perfection down to the minutest detail. Ask people why some people have a monobrow and they will make up a survival advantage, and then ask why most people don’t have one and they will dream up a contrary advantage.
This belief that people are perfect is based on Victorian religion, not science, nor for that matter older religious beliefs. People are not perfect. No animal is perfect. We are not “more evolved” than any other animal - all their family trees have exactly the same length of time on the planet as ours does. If we are all so much “improved”, why are the others, from amoebas to mice to apes still humming along? Because it’s not “survival of the fittest”, it never was - it’s “survival of the adequate and the fortunate”.