Lake in Africa calcifies animals and transforms them into statues

It all seems to have come out of a work of fiction, but it wasn't. Natrão Lake, located in northern Tanzania, has the deadly ability to transform living animals into calcified statues. The killer practices of the river occur due to the high degree of natron present in the water, a salt based on sodium carbonate and sodium bicarbonate.

The waters reach 60 ° C, with a pH ranging from 9 to 10.5 - all as a work of ash from a volcano present in a valley in the same region. The only animal to live quietly in its waters is an ultra- resistant tilapia ( alcalapia alcalica ), because the others cannot survive contact with deadly water.

It is common for birds that crash in the region to be attracted to the river, deceived by its reflective surface, and suffer from the tragic fate. The same thing is very common with flamingos, which use the river's salt islands as a nest for their eggs.

Photographer Nick Brandt, explorer of Africa and author of the photo above, was at Natrão Lake in 2010 and made several images. They can be seen on the photographer's official website, which has just released everything in the book “Across the Ravaged Land ” .