DEADLY LAKE NATRON TURNS ANIMALS INTO GHOSTLY ‘STATUES’

GOSTLY STATUTES of animals allegedly appear on Lake Natron. This lake, which experts say contains high levels of 'Alkaline' which has been affecting the organisms around the water by burning the skin and eyes alters the appearance of the organism. These photos were taken on Lake Natron, a lake known for its high alkaline content of PH9-PH 10.5, burning the skin and eyes of animals that are close to the water. Take a look at the pictures for yourself.

Approaching the shoreline of Lake Natron in Tanzania, photographer Nick Brandt faced an eerie sight: There, lying on the earth as still and stiff as statues, were calcified corpses of a variety of birds and bats that had met their untimely demise after crashing into the deadly waters.

"No one knows for certain exactly how [these animals] die, but it seems that the extreme reflection of the lake's surface confuses them, causing them to crash into the lake," Brandt writes in his new photo book Across the Ravaged Land. “The water has very 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 salts cause the organisms to calcify, perfectly preserved, as they dry up. ”

Other than serving as a breeding ground for the endangered Lesser Flamingo and as home to certain types of algae and bacteria, Lake Natron is inhospitable to life.

Blood-red from the bacteria that live in it, the salt lake is steaming hot, with temperatures that can reach up to 140 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the New Scientist.

“Discovering [these animals] washed up along the shoreline of Lake Natron, I thought they were extraordinary - every last minute detail perfectly preserved down to the tip of a bat's tongue, the minute hairs on his face. The whole fish eagle was the most amazing and revelatory find, ”Brandt, who photographed these calcified animals in 2010 and 2012, told The Huffington Post in an email Wednesday.

The creatures, he said, were “rock hard” from the calcification.

“There was never any possibility of bending a wing or turning a head to make a better pose - they were like rock,” he said, “so we took them and placed them on branches and rocks just as we found them, always with a view to imagining it as a portrait in death. ”

"The idea of ​​portraits of dead animals in the place where they once lived, placed in positions as alive again in death, was simply too compelling to ignore," Brandt said of his decision to photograph the animals. “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. Re-animated, alive again in death. ”