The lake, with its incredible properties (which can be explained by its chemical make-up: the alkalinity varies between pH 9 and pH 10.5) has preserved these creatures. 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. The soda and salt causes the creatures to calcify, perfectly preserved, as they dry. 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.

I unexpectedly found the creatures – all manner of birds and bats – washed up along the shoreline of Lake Natron in Northern Tanzania. The calcified animals were found by National Geographic photographer Nick Brandt, who supposedly found the dead animals floating around in the water, or washed up on the shore. The stone that we were talking about earlier is actually a chemical process to which the animals were subjected (much like Egyptian mummification). The internet has a funny way of taking a story and transforming it into something completely fake, so before you read on, we urge you to check out this article, where the process of preservation and the ecosystem of the Natron Lake is explained. Ok, it’s not really stone, but something very similar. Lake Natron may be beautiful, but it seems that it holds a deadly secret: it turns animals that touch it into stone.

You might have seen them circulating on the internet, and if you didn’t, we will share them with you. Have you ever heard about Lake Natron? It is one of the most serene lakes in all Africa, but it is also the source of some truly eerie photographs.

Lake natron calcified animals