Flamingos are some of the lucky birds that can make the trip across the lake which is 30-miles wide at its longest point. 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. 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. 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. 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. As beautiful as this lake appears, it is as dangerous. 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.

It turns animals to stone In the northern region of Arusha close to the Kenyan border lies Tanzania’s 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. The Lake came into notice worldwide after the great photographer Nick Brandt released some of his captures during his visit to the Lake Natron. The culprit is Ol Doinyo Lengai, a million-year old volcano just south of Lake Natron. 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. 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.

Natron lake tanzania youtube