Case file · High strangeness
The lake that 'turns animals to stone'
In 2013 photographer Nick Brandt published pictures of birds and bats from Lake Natron, Tanzania, preserved stiff and white as if turned to stone, and they spread worldwide as proof of a 'petrifying lake'.
2013 CE · -2.42, 36.00 · status: explained
The account
Brandt had found the dead animals washed up on the shore and posed them on branches. The lake is extremely alkaline, up to pH 10.5, because of sodium carbonate from the nearby volcanoes, and it is the main breeding site of lesser flamingos.
The sceptical view
The animals were mummified by soda salts after dying, not turned to stone; the posing was the photographer's.