News

Terrifying Tanzania Lake Turns Animals Into Statues

By Kamal Nayan | Update Date: Oct 04, 2013 09:35 AM EDT

Lake Natron is a lake located in Tanzania. The temperature in the lake sometimes reaches up to 140 degree and pH level comes close to that of ammonia.

Photographer Nick Brandt approached the shoreline of the Lake Natron in Tanzania, and captured some frightening and strange sights. He found there that variety of birds and bats had met their untimely demise and their skeleton stood still.

“No one knows for certain exactly how [these animals] die, but it appears that the extreme reflective nature of the lake’s surface confuses them, causing them to crash into the lake,” Brandt wrote in his new photo book Across the Ravaged Land.

“The water has an extremely high soda and salt content, so high that it would strip the ink off my Kodak film boxes within a few seconds. The soda and salt causes the creatures to calcify, perfectly preserved, as they dry, ” he writes.

Apart from certain kinds of algae and bacteria, the lake doesn’t support any kind of habitats.

“Discovering washed up along the shoreline of Lake Natron, I thought they were extraordinary – every last tiny detail perfectly preserved down to the tip of a bat’s tongue, the minute hairs on his face. The entire fish eagle was the most surprising and revelatory find,” Brandt told The Huffington Post in an email.

He also said the creatures were "rock hard" from the calcification.

© 2023 Counsel & Heal All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.

Join the Conversation

Real Time Analytics