Lake natron tanzania facts8/16/2023 ![]() ![]() If they spent any longer in the lake, they would have died.Ĭurrently, Lake Natron is under threat. It burned their eyes and skin, but they managed to drag themselves ashore. Everyone survived the crash but they were in the water unprotected. In 2007, a helicopter carrying a group of wildlife videographers wishing to get footage of the flamingos crashed into the lake. People have occasionally survived the lake’s potency. ![]() Lake Natron would have saved pharaonic embalmers a lot of work. The ancient Egyptians used sodium carbonate and bicarbonate in the mummification process. Photo: Shutterstockįor most humans, the lake’s qualities are more suitable for the dead than the living. The lake doesn’t quite have that instant effect. The graphically eerie positions looked like the finger of Medusa had really touched them. Wildlife photographer Nick Brandt made headlines in 2013 by staging photos of the mummified remains of the poor creatures around Lake Natron. They drown in the toxic potion, and their outsides and insides calcify. The mirror-like surface tricks them into diving into the red waters for food. Some alkaline tilapia (a member of the cichlid family) can sustain themselves in the cooler parts of the lake.īut to some wildlife, especially birds, Lake Natron can be a death trap. Somehow, a few species of fish, invertebrates, and algae manage to live in the lake. In Lake Natron, their pigment paints the water a striking red. Generally, cyanobacteria carry different pigments. The lake’s salinity has welcomed salt-consuming, halophilic microorganisms called cyanobacteria, which need photosynthesis to survive. Lake Natron’s deceptively glassy surface. Its average alkalinity is 10.5, its pH surpasses 12, and its water temperature ranges from 40˚ to 60˚C. This concentrated the trona (sodium sesquicarbonate dihydrate) and natron (hydrated sodium carbonate) in the leftover water, creating a highly toxic brine. Since the lake had no outflow and received irregular rainfall, it endured thousands of years of intense evaporation from the heat. During the Pleistocene period, a rare type of lava rich in sodium and potassium carbonates ran down the slopes of the Ol Doinyo Lengai volcano and into the lake. It’s fed by the Southern Ewaso Ng’iro River in Kenya. This shallow but wide lake is just three metres deep but 22km wide. Tanzania has no less than four alkaline lakes, but Lake Natron is the most famous. ![]() Lake Natron is a hypersaline and highly alkaline lake located in the eastern section of the volatile East African Rift. In North Tanzania, a unique inland lake turns wildlife to stone. That’s a legend, but a natural wonder in Africa today does just that. The uniqueness of lake Natron since its discovery has prompted the Tanzanian government to upgrade it to the Ramsar List of Wetlands of International Importance in the year 2001.We all know about the Greek monster Medusa, whose deadly gaze turned men to stone. ![]() But sometimes the lake also becomes inhospitable to these flamingos when the alkalinity of the water increases and if they come in direct contact with the water in that period. The phenomenon of gathering flamingos in large numbers is often referred to as the “pink parade” by biologists. Hence, lesser flamingos have a pinkish hue in their body. It is also said that Spirulina, blue-green algae with red pigments present in this lake, passes on their pigments to these flamingos that feed on these algae and raise their young ones there. The flamingos’ nests are built on small islands, which form in the lake during the dry season. The lake being shallow is an ideal breeding ground for more than 2 million Lesser Flamingos (Phoenicopterus minor). Moreover, the lake derives its vermillion shade of red and pink from a few species of halophiles and thermophiles that are an integral part of this lake. The alkaline tilapia, a very rare fish, lives along the edges of the hot spring inlets. In spite of its deadly nature, the lake is known to be hospitable to a few of the world’s endemic species. ![]()
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