#Lake natron animals in colour skin#

(Photos courtesy: Nick Brandt/ Hasted Kraeutler Gallery) In Lake Natron, their pigment paints the water a striking red. However, salt-loving microorganisms thrive in. Generally, cyanobacteria carry different pigments. It is an alkaline Salt Lake, with a PH up to 10.5, making it a harsh environment for many animals to survive in. These birds, along with greater flamingos, nest in the area every year, and it's the red algae they eat that give these birds their vibrant pink colour. The red color comes from bacteria The lake’s salinity has welcomed salt-consuming, halophilic microorganisms called cyanobacteria, which need photosynthesis to survive.

The environment supports salt-loving microorganisms and algae, two species of fish known as alkaline tilapia live in the waters near the lake's hot springs, and the lake is the only breeding area in eastern African for the lesser flamingo. There are salt marshes and wetlands around the lake's shores. In fact, whereas a lake that actually petrified anything that came near it or touched the water would likely be a complete dead-zone for birds and animals, life thrives around Lake Natron.

#Lake natron animals in colour skin#

The 'stony' look about them just comes from the the salts and sodas in the natron caking onto their skin and feathers.

Animal and bird corpses can be found in and around the lake. However, these animals are simply dying near the lake, their bodies get covered with a layer of natron, which dries them out and preserves them. Tanzania safari Lake Natron: Tanzania’s deadly red lake See sections Apart from sometimes turning red, another reason that Lake Natron is so unusual is that it's incredibly caustic (alkaline) from the nearby volcano. This is what creates things like petrified wood and dinosaur fossils. An endemic species of fish, the alkaline tilapia, lives along the edges of the hotspring inlets, and the lake actually derives its color from salt-loving microorganisms that thrive in its alkaline waters. This bright red lake is the world’s most caustic body of water, but not to everything. When a body becomes truly petrified, its cells are slowly replaced over time by rock. Lake Natron, in Africa’s Great Rift Valley, practically sends a warning with its color. Other volcanoes usually spew silicates, but the Ol Doinyo Lengai is the only one on the planet that spills 'natrocarbonatites' as cool, runny, dark washes.That's really what's going on here. It's a favorite among petrologists because it's the only one of its kind, Hannes Mattsson, a researcher at the Swiss Institute of Technology in Zurich, told NBC News. The culprit is Ol Doinyo Lengai, a million-year old volcano just south of Lake Natron. Nick Brandt / Courtesy of Hasted Kraeutler Gallery A calcified dove, from Nick Brandt's book Across The Ravaged Land, published by Abrams, New York. How did the lake get this hostile? The 'salt' in it isn't the regular table variety harvested from seawater, but magmatic limestone that's been forged deep in the Earth, poured out in runny lava flows and blasted into the air to become ash clouds 10 miles high. Water levels fluctuate easily because it's so hot - when the levels drop, the corpses are left behind on the shores, coated in salt, exactly how Brandt found them. An image shared on Facebook claims it turns any animal that touches it to stone. Small birds or bats that try and fail to cross the 12- by 30-mile lake fall in, as do insects like beetles and locusts. Flamingos are some of the lucky birds that can make the trip across the lake which is 30-miles wide at its longest point. 'If a body falls anywhere else it decomposes very quickly, but on the edge of the lake, it just gets encrusted in salt and stays forever,' David Harper, an ecologist at the University of Leicester who has visited Lake Natron four times, told NBC News.