If Lake Natron mummifies birds, how do the fish survive? As far as I can tell, that's what you're seeing in Brandt's creepy photos - birds and bats that look like Tim Burton's garden statuary, but are actually just mummified (and then propped up for artistic purposes). (In fact, they used to harvest it from dry lake beds - Lake Natron isn't the only lake in Africa that's home to large quantities of naturally occurring natron.) It's both a serious drying agent and anti-bacterial, so immersion in natron can suck all the moisture out of a dead body while simultaneously preserving it against the ravages of microorganisms. That's because it's the mineral salt the ancient Egyptians used as part of their mummification rituals. Natron, the stuff for which the lake is named, should also sound a bit familiar to you.

Perhaps you have recently heard about Tanzania's Lake Natron, a body of water that has become famous on the Internet over the last couple of days because of the work of artist Nick Brandt, who took some eerie, posed photos of the calcified corpses of birds that he found along the lake's shore.

Tanzania lake natron youtube