What are crocodiles tears?

Hey I did not even know this either. Good Q
here is what I found

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To weep crocodile tears is to pretend a sorrow that one doesn’t in fact feel, to create a hypocritical show of emotion. The idea comes from the ancient belief that crocodiles weep while luring or devouring their prey.
This story seems to have been taken up by medieval French and English writers and that’s where we get it from. For example, in 1565 Sir John Hawkins wrote: “In this river we saw many Crocodils .. His nature is ever when he would have his prey, to cry and sob like a Christian body, to provoke them to come to him, and then he snatcheth at them”.
The first example known in English seems to be in a travel book of about 1400, The Voyage and Travail of Sir John Mandeville (I’ve modernised the spelling somewhat): “In many places of Inde are many crocodiles—that is, a manner of long serpent. These serpents slay men and they eat them weeping”. One version of the story says that the beast weeps over the head after having eaten the body, not from repentance but from frustrated gluttony: the head is simply too bony to be worth consuming.
The story was taken up by Edmund Spenser in The Fairie Queen and then by Shakespeare. Having such authorities on its side made it almost inevitable that the reference would stay in the language. For example, in the story of how the elephant got his trunk in the Just So Stories, by Rudyard Kipling: “ ‘Come hither, Little One,’ said the Crocodile, ‘for I am the Crocodile,’ and he wept crocodile-tears to show it was quite true”.
My naturalist friends tell me that crocodiles can’t cry, because they have no tear ducts—they would be useless in an animal that spends so much time in the water. The eyes can produce secretions to moisten the lids if the animal is out of the water for a while, but these are hardly tears. I am told, though, by people well versed in crocodilian biology that the glands that moisten the eyes are so close to the animal’s throat that the effort of swallowing forces moisture from them, so giving the impression of tears.

An insincere display of grief, as in When the play's star broke her leg, her understudy wept crocodile tears. This term comes from the mistaken notion that crocodiles weep while eating their prey, one held in ancient Roman times. The actual term was picked up by Shakespeare and many other writers after him, and remains current.

it is when someone cries to get their way and they are not sincerely crying.

a hypocritical display of sorrow; false or insincere weeping; "the secretaries wept crocodile tears over the manager's dilemma"; "politicians shed crocodile tears over the plight of the unemployed"

An oxymoron.
Crocodiles don't have tears. The saying is that if you 'cry crocodile tears', you're faking for the sake of a show, but no actual tears ever flow.

Crocodile tears is to pretend a sorrow that one doesn’t in fact experience. It has roots in an ancient belief that crocodiles weep while luring their prey.

FAKE tears... like when someone is being fake or plastic to you -- a semblance of caring when they are actually just acting like they do or are just doing it for show...

Dear freind I'm going on a safari this weekend.I'll track a lake and then a healthy crocodile and than I promise I'll make him cry hard. (I'll make him shed lots and lots of tears ) and then I'll revert back to 2. Till than Bye.

It's a term used to describe someone pretending to cry. Usually "crocodile tears" are just one of two big fat slow running tears that run down one side of the face.

goodness something so simple like this got people give a lengthy answer

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