There have been some photographs
circulating through social media recently. You may have come across
some eerie shots of what look to be petrified birds and bats,
seemingly frozen in place during their everyday routine of doing
whatever birds and bats do. These were taken by photographer Nick
Brandt at Lake Natron in Tanzania, famous for its alkaline waters
that are far too caustic to host most life.
Photo by Nick Brandt
The way these photos are presented,
hawks, flamingos and other flying critters apparently come into
accidental contact with the water and suddenly find their bodies
calcifying, “turning to stone” mid-movement. The Verge took the
story and dubbed it, “Lake of doom: deadly waterway calcifies any
animal that dares to dive in.”
Take the photos and the surface
information and of course it looks that way. I mean look at this fish
eagle. He looks like he caught the White Witch of Narnia on a bad
day.
Photo by Nick Brandt
But, as usual with popularized science
stories, this is all far too simplistic, and it's a great opportunity
to raise an eyebrow and question what we're seeing on the internet.
We can walk through the subject
thoughtfully without a ton of work. Let's start by looking at Lake
Natron.
photobucket.com
Surprisingly beautiful, right?
This lake is affected by a handful of
conditions that render it dangerous for most life on Earth. It's
located in a low region of the Great Rift Valley in eastern Africa,
downhill from the continent's only active volcano. The ash that emits
from the “Mountain of God” is comprised largely of sodium
carbonate, an integral compound in baking soda. This ash drifts
through the air and down the streams in the surrounding hills and
ends up in Lake Natron. Natron lies in a basin, so it doesn't empty
out any of its treasures to send elsewhere. This means all those
nasty chemicals build up and create mineral deposits that don't get along too well with most living things.
To add to the trouble, Natron is a
wide, flat, shallow lake, only a few meters deep. This means the
water of the lake has a ton of surface area with which to absorb heat
from the sun, but not much water underneath to take on the heat.
During the dry season in one of the hottest parts of the world, this
leads to extremely hot water. The water in the lake is quick to
evaporate in such conditions, as well, leaving it ever shallower and
ever hotter.
Late Natron's water even takes on a
blood red color in some places, sealing the deal on its deadly appearance.
Wikimedia commons
So no, a 140 degree-F pool of red baking soda
water is, as a general rule, not the wisest place to go. But do
things really dive in and come out calcified?
Yes but no. As with all bodies of
water, some animals find themselves submerged on accident – it's
the nature of living near water. An animal that becomes drenched in
the water when the lake is at high salt concentrations could
certainly find itself hardening to death as a result, particularly if
it is unable to rinse off the sodium carbonate somewhere else.
But the dynamic poses in Brandt's
photos shouldn't fool you. Brandt found these animals dead on the
shores of Lake Natron and, inspired by these stranger-than-fiction
statues, positioned them in ways that convey some degree of life.
Note that this doesn't mean Brandt molded the animals into position
like barbies. He claims that they were as hard as stone, immovable,
and he artfully staged the most preserved ones in the positions in
which he found them.
Photo by Nick Brandt
It does take time, however, for this
calcification to happen. Sodium carbonate doesn't solidify right
away; it slowly dries into a hard, rock-like substance. This perhaps
makes the photos more remarkable, as the birds don't appear to have
been lying still and dead as the chemicals hardened their bodies;
they were alive, experiencing the chemical reaction slowly and forced
to cope with it.
So the water is dangerous, but this
doesn't mean it's irrevocably lethal like the photos and their online treatment tend to imply. Some extremophile fish, bacteria and
crustaceans live in Lake Natron's waters. The red color that makes
the lake immediately remarkable is the pigmentation of an algae that
thrives in Natron's high pH balance. The deathly blood red is
actually a sign of abundant life.
Perhaps more impressively, this lake
serves as the one and only breeding ground for Africa's lesser
flamingo, which relies on the lake's shallow waters to
protect their nests. The birds pile mud up into humps in the middle of the lake and roost there, keeping the eggs out of the water and deterring predators with the surrounding alkaline moat. Flamingos wade and feed in these waters in
droves during breeding season and walk out of the water unscathed.
So, is there a gray lake in Africa that
petrifies anything that touches it? No. While Brandt's stone-like
statues draw fascination to this lake, the truth of its complexity is
perhaps even more amazing. Lake Natron reveals the mind-bending
resilience of life amongst its hot and stinky waters.
References:
http://www.moivaro.com/pages/lake_natron_tented_camp/lodge.htm
http://news.discovery.com/earth/photographer-rick-brandt-lake-natron-131003.htm
http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/10/03/lake-that-turns-animals-to-stone-not-so-deadly-as-photos-suggest/
http://www.geekosystem.com/natron-birds/
http://www.geekosystem.com/natron-birds/
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