![]() ![]() Some fish, too, have had limited success vacationing at the lake-lower salinity lagoons form on the outer edges from hot springs flowing into Lake Natron. "Humans cannot, and would die if their legs were exposed for any length of time.” So far this year, water levels have been too high for the flamingos to nest. “Flamingos have evolved very leathery skin on their legs so they can tolerate the salt water," David Harper, a limnology professor at the University of Leicester, tells. When the water hits the right level, the baby birds are kept safe from predators by a caustic moat. Three-quarters of the world’s lesser flamingos fly over from other saline lakes in the Rift Valley and nest on salt crystal islands that appear when the water is at a very specific level-too high and the birds can’t build their nests, too low and predators can waltz across the lake bed and attack. Once every three or four years, when conditions are right, the lake is covered with the pink birds as they stop flight to breed. The unique color comes from cyanobacteria that photosynthesize into bright red and orange hues as the water evaporates and salinity rises before that process occurs during the dry season, the lake is blue.īut one species actually makes life among all that death-flamingos. The water is oversaturated with salt, can reach temperatures of 140 degrees and has a pH between 9 and 10.5-so corrosive that it can calcify those remains, strip ink off printed materials and burn the skin and eyes of unadapted animals. The lake's landscape is surreal and deadly-and made even more bizarre by the fact that it's the place where nearly 75 percent of the world's lesser flamingos are born. Bats, swallows and more are chemically preserved in the pose in which they perished deposits of sodium carbonate in the water (a chemical once used in Egyptian mummification) seal the creatures in their watery tomb. ![]() Thanks to the horny protective layer on the legs and beak, the flamingos often manage to survive the Natron lake.At the base of a mountain in Tanzania’s Gregory Rift, Lake Natron burns bright red, surrounded by the calcified remains of animals that were unfortunate enough to fall into the salty water. No, they are not the men and much less the pigeons of the squares, but the pink flamingos. # The invincible species that survives the hellish lake Credits: NatronĮveryone thinks that this is the infernal lake or the lake of death, but a species of animal manages to survive the chemical composition of Lake Natron. This is how when animals, especially bats and birds, touch the water of Lake Tanzania, the minerals inside begin to turn them into stone, trapping them in the position they took before they touched the cursed lake. This substance makes the waters of the lake have the same properties of ammonia with a pH between 9 and 10.5 and a temperature of about 60 ✬, creating an environment so corrosive that almost no animal can survive. Lake Natron is called this way because of the presence of the natural compound of sodium carbonate hydrate (in fact Natron) within its waters. # Natron: the sodium carbonate hydrate that kills Credits: Natron However, you should not imagine the classic blue lake, but rather a basin of reddish water with deep white streaks typical color of those lakes rich in sodium and often subject to evaporation cycles. The lake that turns animals into stone is called Lake Natron and is located in northern Tanzania, in the African Rift Valley at about 600m altitude. THE LAKE that turns ANIMALS into STONE # The Lake of Death Credits: natron This time, however, we are not talking about magic, but only about nature. ![]() It might remember one of the punishments of some evil witch, when then the good protagonist always comes to save the poor creatures. A mix between a horror film scene and reality, yet there really is a lake that turns animals into stone.
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