After all, if that were the case then Brandt would not have been able to reposition his birds into such surreal and breathtaking poses.įurthermore, there are species that are perfectly capable of living near lake Natron without facing inevitable doom - specifically, there are extremophile fish, bacterium, and a specific type of algae that thrives in the alkaline-rich waters. The chemical process to which they were subjected is much closer to Egyptian mummifcation than anything else, and although the bodies appear chalky and stone-like in appearance, but they are not completely immovable. Secondly, the birds are not “stone,” per se. Though the photos taken by Nick Brandt depict the petrified birds on perches and in naturalistic poses as if they were just petrified, they are all entirely staged. Brandt said as much in an e-mail to NBC news: “I unexpectedly found the creatures - all manner of birds and bats - washed up along the shoreline of Lake Natron in Northern Tanzania I took these creatures as I found them on the shoreline, and then placed them in ‘living’ positions, bringing them back to ‘life.'” Unfortunately, the nuances of this lake’s ecosystem seem to escape many a casual observer, and what people appear to be taking away from most coverage is this: that there’s a lake in Africa that kills literally every creature that comes near it (which is false), and that it’s capable of killing those creatures instantly by turning them to actual stone (which is also false).įirst of all, the preservation process is not something that happens instantaneously - it happens over a much longer period of time. It also does preserve many of these animals’ bodies, specifically due to the combination of chemicals that are deposited into the water via runoff from a nearby Great Rift Valley volcano, Ol Doinyo Lengai. As the New Scientist says, the lake can reach temperatures up to 60 ☌ and has an alkalinity between pH 9 and pH 10.5, making it pretty dang gross on the best of days - it can even burn the skin and eyes of animals who aren’t adapted to it.
No one is disputing that Natron is a dangerous place for most species, of course. Case in point: after those gorgeous pictures of mummified Lake Natron birds made the rounds, now everybody thinks that the lake has supernatural gorgon-like powers. Sometimes the media does this thing where it takes something incredibly fascinating and turns into a crappy game of telephone, and at the end everybody believes something completely fake.
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