Mysteries in Lake Natron: Turning Animals into Stones

Lake Natron in Tanzania is a standout amongst the most quiet lakes in Africa, but at the same time it's the wellspring of the absolute most phantasmagorical photos ever caught — pictures that look as if living creatures had right away swung to stone.

The antacid water in Lake Natron has a pH as high as 10.5 and is so acidic it can blaze the skin and eyes of creatures that aren't adjusted to it. The water's alkalinity originates from the sodium carbonate and different minerals that stream into the lake from the encompassing slopes. What's more, stores of sodium carbonate — which was once utilized as a part of Egyptian embalmment — additionally goes about as an awesome kind of additive for those creatures sufficiently unfortunate to kick the bucket in the waters of Lake Natron.

Regardless of some media reports, the creature didn't just swing to stone and kick the bucket in the wake of coming into contact with the lake's water. Truth be told, Lake Natron's basic waters bolster a flourishing biological community of salt swamps, freshwater wetlands, flamingos and other wetland flying creatures, tilapia and the green growth on which expansive herds of flamingos food. Presently, picture taker Scratch Brandt has caught frequenting pictures of the lake and its dead in a book titled "Over the Assaulted Land" (Abrams Books, 2013).


Brandt found the remaining parts of flamingos and different creatures with pale sodium carbonate stores plotting their bodies in sharp alleviation. "I surprisingly discovered the animals — all way of winged creatures and bats — cleaned up along the shoreline of Lake Natron," Brandt wrote in his book. "Nobody knows for certain precisely how beyond words, … the water has a greatly high pop and salt substance, so high that it would strip the ink off my Kodak film boxes inside of a few moments.

"I took these creatures as I found them on the shoreline, and then placed them in 'living' positions, bringing them back to 'life,' as it were," Brandt wrote, referring to the way he repositioned the animals. "Reanimated, alive again in death."

Amid rearing season, more than 2 million lesser flamingos (Phoenicopterus minor) utilize the shallow lake as their essential reproducing ground in Africa. The flamingos' homes are based on little islands that shape in the lake amid the dry season.

Lake Natron is one of two basic lakes around there of East Africa; the other is Lake Bahi. Both are terminal lakes that don't deplete out to any stream or ocean; they are encouraged by hot springs and little waterways. As shallow lakes in a hot atmosphere, their water temperatures can achieve as high as 106 degrees Fahrenheit (41 degrees Celsius).

The tranquility of Lake Natron — and its flamingo populace — are undermined by a proposed hydroelectric force plant on the Ewaso Ngiro Stream, the primary waterway sustaining the lake. As confined as the lake seems to be (it wasn't even found by Europeans until 1954), there are no insurances set up for the lake or its undermined flamingo population.

Here are some photos of clacified animals in Lake Natron taken by the photographer Nick Brandt :

Calcified Dove

Calcified fish eagle

Calcified Songbird

Calcified Swallow