“I unexpectedly found the creatures – all manner of birds and bats – washed up along the shoreline of Lake Natron in Northern Tanzania. “The notion of portraits of dead animals in the place where they once lived is what also drew me to photographing the creatures in the Calcified series,” Brandt explains. Only invertebrates, a few algae invertebrates and some fish that live near the edges of the lake can survive this environment. Flamingos sometime use the predator-free salt islands that sometimes form on the lake for nesting, but it’s a risky gamble, as the photos below clearly show. As soon as birds and bats plunge into the waters of lake Natron, the minerals start turning their flesh into stone and preserving them exactly as they were in their final moments.
No animal can withstand this caustic environment and venturing into the acidic environment is usually fatal. The lake’s alkalinity is similar to that of ammonia, with a pH between 9 and 10.5, and the temperature of the water can reach 60 ☌. It’s the same mineral the Egyptians used to preserve their mummies. Natron, which gives the lake its name, is a naturally occurring compound found in volcanic ash.
He later found out something even more shocking – those were real animals calcified by the lake’s alkaline water. When photographer Nick Brandt first visited Lake Natron, in Northern Tanzania, he was shocked by the macabre animal statues he saw aligned across its shoreline. Sodium carbonate was once used in Egyptian mummification processes for this very reason.įurther detail about the photos can be found in Brandt's book "Across the Ravaged Land" published in 2013.Lethal Alkaline Lake in Africa Turns Animals into Stone Statues
Instead, the lake's high sodium carbonate content acts as a preservative for the animals unfortunate enough to die in its waters. Lake Natron in fact contains a thriving ecosystem of freshwater wetlands and salt marshes, home to the animals pictured in Brandt's photography.
The lake's alkalinity comes from the minerals flowing into the lake from the hills surrounding it, particularly sodium carbonate.īut contrary to the clickbait headlines, Lake Natron doesn't instantly kill the creatures that regularly come into contact with it. Lake Natron is indeed hostile to wildlife that hasn't adapted to its highly alkaline water, which at a pH of 10.5 would burn the skin and eyes of any human foolhardy enough to take a swim. Lake Natron is home to a thriving ecosystem, and its waters' alkalinity preserves the remains of animals that die in or near it.įor around a decade now, striking images of calcified animal remains on Lake Natron in Tanzania taken by the photographer Nick Brandt have circulated through social media, often featuring alongside eye-grabbing headlines describing it as a lake that turns living animals to stone.
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