Description of the attraction
The Zoological Museum of the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences is one of the largest in the world and the oldest zoological museum in Russia. His collection is based on the collection of the Peter's Kunstkamera, founded in 1714, which contained many stuffed animals and skeletons, unusual insects, fish and other exhibits of wildlife. In 1832, this part of the Kunstkamera collection was transformed into a separate museum, which was opened to the public in 1838 in the premises of the Kunstkamera. The museum funds include exhibits brought by the expeditions of Pallas and Gmelin from Siberia, from the round-the-world voyages of Kruzenshtern, Bellingshausen, and the finds of Miklouho-Maclay. From 1896 to the present, the museum has been located in the southern warehouse of the Exchange on the spit of Vasilievsky Island.
Already in the middle of the 19th century, the collection of the Zoological Museum was not inferior to the best collections of foreign museums. In the late 19th - early 20th centuries, when Central Asia was actively studied, the museum was replenished with valuable and large zoological collections from the research travels of Przhevalsky, Pevtsov, brothers Grum-Grzhimailo, Kozlov and Potanin.
Now, on three floors of the museum building, more than 30 thousand specimens of animals are displayed - from protozoa to primates. In the first room, visitors see two huge skeletons of a whale. The most unique exhibit is the Berezovsky mammoth preserved in the permafrost, which, according to scientists, is an excellent material for cloning. The museum contains stuffed deep-sea fish caught from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean and the rarest coelacanth fish, the skeleton of an extinct sea cow. Here you can see penguins and fur seals, Amur tiger and giraffe, wolf and elk, pelican and parrot, get acquainted with the world of the underwater kingdom - a wide variety of fish, jellyfish, molluscs and corals, admire the collections of unusual insects. The exposition contains only a small part of the museum's funds, which number more than 15 million exhibits, and they are constantly being replenished.
