See subject. I can’t imagine their tears are. I can’t recall if ours are black.
If I had a nickel for every inane question I have asked…
You know, I’ve never wondered this but now I must know the answer.
Ditto cats. Black eye-boogers on every one.
My dalmatian-mix, 8-month old pup’s are orangish.
Porphyrins. It’s the leftover gunk from when red blood cells are broken down. It’s excreted through the intestinal tract but in dogs it’s also in the tears, urine and saliva.
Neat! Never even occurred to me to wonder about this either, but that there is quality trivia :).
But on a quick search apparently this is not the cause in cats.
Cool. Now I will no longer call them eye boogers but sequestrae.
ETA: But either silenus’s cats are actually not cats or somebody’s fooling somebody.
Last night I met an orthopedic surgeon walking his dog.
Mentioned casually that sequestrae are the bone chips resulting from swelling of the marrow pushing the bone apart in osteomyelitis. Which he knew, but i forced him to acknowledge my utter brilliance for knowing that. then I zapped him by pointing out his dog’s eye boogers. Shock and awe.
Yes!
Hat’s off GQ!
My dog’s eye boogers are light colored like my own.
What color is the dog’s fur? Implausible as it seems, could that be related at all?
We have two, both predominantly white on their faces, and one has pale yellow eye crud and the other the black mentioned in the op. That dog, however, has black fur elsewhere on her body; the yellow-curd-producing dog is all tan-and-white.
One of my dog’s eye boogers are white. The little one’s are black. They are both black dogs.
I prefer yampee myself, eye booger just sounds childish. And no I don’t know why plant urine ends up in your eye either.