About
The Zoology Museum of the University of Aberdeen is a working teaching collection that is also open, free, to anyone who wants to walk in. It occupies the zoology building on the university's Old Aberdeen campus, reached through the Cruickshank Botanic Garden, and displays a systematic survey of the animal kingdom from protozoa to the great whales — the kind of comprehensive comparative arrangement that was standard in nineteenth-century university zoology departments and which comparatively few institutions have kept intact.
The displays include taxidermy, skeletal and osteological material, study skins, fluid-preserved specimens, shells, corals and insects, arranged to show relationships between groups rather than assembled as a cabinet of curiosities. Because the collection was built for teaching, the emphasis falls on structure and comparison: a visitor can follow the modification of the vertebrate limb across classes, or compare skull morphology across mammalian orders, in a way that a display designed purely for public exhibition rarely permits.
A particular strength is the museum's anatomical models. It holds examples by the major nineteenth-century European model makers, including Auzoux, Brendel and Osterloh, whose papier-mâché, wax and glass constructions were made for exactly this purpose — teaching anatomy and botany at a scale and in a degree of detail that specimens could not provide. These objects are now valued as much for their craftsmanship and their place in the history of scientific teaching as for their original instructional purpose.
The collection reflects Aberdeen's long connection with northern seas and with Scottish natural history: marine mammal material, north Atlantic fish and seabirds are well represented, and the university's zoological research in these fields has fed the collection over many decades. The museum is open on weekdays throughout the year, admission is free, and school and group visits are handled through the university's outreach provision at the Aberdeen Biodiversity Centre. It remains part of the School of Biological Sciences rather than being run as a separate public attraction, and visitors are effectively walking into a working academic facility that happens to be freely open to anyone.
Categories:
Plan Your Visit
⏱️ Recommended Visit Duration
💡 Visitor Tips
- The museum opens weekdays only, 10am to 4pm, and is closed at weekends — plan accordingly.
- Access is through the Cruickshank Botanic Garden; park on the eastern side and follow the paved path up the ramp into the zoology building.
- Entry is free and no booking is needed for individual visitors.
- Because this is a working university building, opening can be affected by university holidays and teaching — check the collections website before travelling.
- Walk the displays in sequence rather than browsing; the collection is arranged systematically and the comparative logic is the point.
- Look for the Auzoux, Brendel and Osterloh models — these nineteenth-century teaching models are a genuinely notable survival.
- Schools and groups should contact the Aberdeen Biodiversity Centre rather than the museum directly.
- Combine the visit with the Cruickshank Botanic Garden immediately outside and with King's College and St Machar's Cathedral in Old Aberdeen.
Highlights
A Systematic Survey of the Animal Kingdom
The museum's organising principle is comparative and systematic rather than thematic: the displays run through the animal kingdom from protozoa and simple invertebrates to the largest mammals, arranged so that relationships between groups are legible from the cases themselves.
This is how university zoology collections were built in the nineteenth century, to teach comparative anatomy and classification, and relatively few survive with that logic intact. For a visitor it means the museum rewards walking the sequence in order, watching structural themes recur and vary across increasingly distant branches of the tree.
Whales and Marine Mammals
Aberdeen's position on the north-east coast, and the university's long research engagement with northern seas, have given the museum substantial marine mammal material, including skeletal remains of large cetaceans. Whale bone on this scale is difficult to display and comparatively rare in smaller museums, and its presence here is a direct consequence of Scottish coastal strandings and of the region's whaling and fishing past.
The material supports the museum's comparative approach particularly well, since cetacean skeletons show the mammalian body plan modified about as far as it can be.
The Auzoux, Brendel and Osterloh Models
The museum holds anatomical and botanical models by the major nineteenth-century European makers — Auzoux's papier-mache dissectible anatomies, Brendel's enlarged plant models, and work by Osterloh.
These were made to solve a specific teaching problem: showing internal structure at a scale students could see, in objects that could be handled and taken apart, which no specimen would survive. They are now prized both as objects of considerable craftsmanship and as evidence of how science was actually taught, and Aberdeen's holdings are a genuinely notable survival of this material.
Skeletal and Osteological Collections
Bone is the heart of a comparative zoology collection, and the museum's skeletal material covers a wide range of vertebrate groups, mounted and disarticulated. Skulls in particular are displayed in comparative series, allowing visitors to trace how dentition, jaw articulation and cranial proportion vary with diet and lifestyle across mammalian orders.
For anyone who has only encountered natural history displays built around habitat dioramas or single spectacular specimens, the systematic osteology here is a markedly different and more analytical way of looking at animals.
Collections
The University of Aberdeen Zoology Museum holds a comparative teaching collection surveying the animal kingdom from protozoa to large cetaceans, displayed in systematic order in the university's zoology building on the Old Aberdeen campus. Holdings include taxidermy mounts, study skins, mounted and disarticulated skeletal material, fluid-preserved specimens, shells, corals, echinoderms and insects.
Particular strengths include marine mammal material reflecting the region's northern-seas connections, seabirds and coastal species of north-east Scotland, comparative osteology and skull series, and a notable group of nineteenth-century anatomical and botanical teaching models by makers including Auzoux, Brendel and Osterloh.
The museum remains part of the School of Biological Sciences and continues in active use for teaching and outreach.
The Animal Kingdom
A systematic survey from invertebrates through fish, amphibians, reptiles and birds to mammals.
Comparative Anatomy
Skeletal and osteological series, fluid-preserved specimens and dissections used for teaching structure.
Teaching Models
Nineteenth-century anatomical and botanical models by Auzoux, Brendel, Osterloh and others.
Themes
Time Periods
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.