Natural History opened in 1857 as the museum of the Royal Dublin Society. It has developed as a cabinet style zoological museum with animals from all over the world. The history of collecting extends over two centuries and has resulted in a rich variety of animals, many of which are now endangered or extinct.

Exhibitions in this museum have changed little in style for over a century, adding to the charm and rarity of this national treasure. The tradition of collecting and research continues and only a fraction of the two million specimens is on display.

The Irish Room on the ground floor is dedicated to the variety of animals found in Ireland. Visitors are faced with imposing skeletons of the extinct giant deer in front of a collection of more familiar mammals, birds and fish. Don’t miss the insects hidden under their covers that protect their delicate colours from fading in sunlight. The upper floor of the building was laid out in the 19 th Century in a scientific arrangement showing animals by taxonomic group. This scheme demonstrated the diversity of animal life in an evolutionary sequence.

The first floor can now be accessed from the original grand stone staircase which has been recently restored.

New facilities include the Discovery Zone where visitors can handle taxidermy and open drawers to see what is lurking inside, and our Reading Area at first floor level which is a great place to rest and settle down with a good book.

Exhibitions

Irish Fauna

Background

The animals found in Ireland today inhabit a landscape that was scoured by ice on a number of occasions over the last 100,000 years. At the later stages of this Ice Age, animals such as the giant deer Megaloceros giganteus lived in an Ireland with a climate similar to ours. They shared their landscape with woolly mammoths, spotted hyenas and brown bears.

Ireland has few mammal species, compared with other European countries. Only certain species travelled into Ireland before the island was separated from Britain and northwest Europe at the end of the Ice Age. Since then, many species have been introduced by humans. For example, the rabbit, which was introduced by Anglo-Normans in the 12th Century.

Irish Mammals

One of a series of very popular exhibits was made by the Dublin taxidermy firm of Williams & Son. They produced ‘family groups’ of badgers, otters and pine martens. These mammals are characteristic of the Irish landscape. Badgers are active at night, seeking out pastureland where they feed on earthworms, as well as many other ingredients in a highly varied diet. This brings them into contact with livestock. They share a disease with cattle, which is known as bovine tuberculosis. Although, the link between infection in badgers and cattle has not been confirmed, even after many decades of research. However, the suspected role of badgers in the infection of livestock has put them under pressure, with many thousands killed in programmes aimed at controlling the disease.

Bird Life

Many species of Irish birds featured in the exhibition. Bitterns have a distinctive booming call, which may be heard over long distances in wetlands. As reed beds were reduced owing to the drainage of many Irish wetlands over recent centuries, the bittern has ceased to breed here. Nowadays it is the turn of the Corncrake Crex to be threatened by changing farming practices. These birds are the subject of a campaign that may see corncrakes survive as a breeding bird in Ireland.

Francis Ledwidge (1887 – 1917) wrote a lament for his friend Thomas MacDonagh, who was executed in Dublin in 1916 for his part in the Easter Rising. It opens with the famous lines:

He shall not hear the bittern cry
In the wild sky where he is lain
Nor voices of the sweeter birds
Above the wailing of the rain

Predators

Predators that compete with farmers have always been under threat. Brown bears and wolves have been cleared from Ireland over the centuries, but golden eagles were common until the late 19th Century. By the late 20th Century, a programme to reintroduce golden eagles was under way in County Donegal.

Many mammals are most active at night and thus are a tempting food source for predators adapted to the dark. Large eyes and sensitive ears give owls a head start in catching prey. The short-eared owl is one of many birds that live in Ireland for part of the year. Voles are its favourite food in other countries, but these are not native to Ireland. Bank voles were introduced to the Cork/Kerry region in the mid 20th Century, and short-eared owls are now found in high densities in this area.

Female peregrine falcons are heavier than males. They use their weight to build up speed, dropping from a great height to crash into their prey with talons at the ready. Like many birds of prey, peregrine falcons have seen a dramatic reduction in their numbers during the 20th Century, but are now making a comeback.

Sea Life

Sea horses are now under pressure through the demand for delicacies in the restaurants of Asia. These small fish not only appear bizarre but also have unusual mating habits. It is the males that raise the young, sheltering a mass of eggs in a brood pouch until they hatch. The specimen on display was collected during the course of ongoing fieldwork and research by Museum staff.

Once common in some Irish rivers, the freshwater pearl mussel has been under pressure for many years because of the pearls that are occasionally enclosed in its shell. Just like oysters, these shellfish sometimes produce a small ball of shiny shell material around an irritating object. Freshwater pearls are not as highly prized as those from saltwater shellfish, as they are considered to be less lustrous. Most modern pearls are produced in shellfish farms.

New animals are still arriving in Ireland and making themselves at home here. Zebra mussels are freshwater shellfish that originated in rivers around the Black Sea and Caspian Sea. They spread across Europe as canals were built, reaching Britain in 1830. It was not until the 1990s that zebra mussels started to spread through Ireland. They are now a major pest, occurring in huge numbers, up to 100,000 per square metre. Alien species often upset the balance of nature when they are moved to new areas without their normal predators.

Occasional oddities on display included a lobster, which has developed with normal coloration only along one side.

Insect Life

Ireland has about 12,000 different species of insect. One of the key roles of the Museum is to help scientists identify animals. It is important to identify each species correctly in order to control pests. Many insects play an important part in keeping nature in balance. They pollinate plants and control other harmful insect species. Regular monitoring of insects gives us a measure of the health of our environment. The common blue butterfly Polyommatus icarus is an indicator of healthy grasslands.

A record specimen of a trout was taken from Lough Ennell, Co. Westmeath, on 15 August 1894 by William Meares. It weighed 11.8kg when caught and still holds the record despite many challenges. One challenge came from a salmon that was mistaken for a trout. This fish is known as Pepper’s Ghost, and, at more than 13.8kg, it had claimed the record since 1861. Scientific examination of its scales confirmed that Pepper’s Ghost was in fact a salmon. This story shows another use for the Museum’s collection – finding the truth behind fishy tales!

Mammals of the World

The first floor of the Museum is home to the lemurs, apes and monkeys that make up the group known as primates, to which we also belong.

Among these, monkeys such as the brown capuchin Cebus apella typify the characteristics that this group shares with us. The eyes face forwards, providing good vision in front, which developed for a life in the trees where the ability to judge distances is crucial. A second feature common to the animals in this group is the opposable thumb on each hand, which allows them to hold on to branches. Many of the primates can do this with their feet as well as their hands, and some have tails that can grasp branches to help their balance in the forest canopy.

Another group with forward-facing eyes is the carnivores. Their vision has adapted for hunting prey. Some of the most skilful carnivores are cats. One example is the leopard Felis bengalensis, which is found throughout Asia, all the way from India in the west to the eastern islands, including the Philippines and Japan.

The largest of the cats is the tiger Panthera tigris, which can weigh more than 400kg. Of eight subspecies of tiger at the beginning of the 20th Century, only three survive. The specimen on display is a Bengal tiger from Nepal that was given to the Museum by King George V in 1913. Since then, tiger numbers have dropped dramatically. Although prized for their fur, they are also hunted for their bones, which are used in medicines popular in the Far East.

Rodents, including hamsters and squirrels, are characterised by sharp gnawing teeth at the front of their mouths. While there may be more than 250 species of squirrel, members of this group are instantly recognised by their characteristic bushy tails. An Indian giant squirrel can weigh up to 3kg and is much larger than its familiar red and grey relatives seen in Ireland. Also known as the Malabar squirrel, the species Ratufa indica uses its tail to balance as it perches in trees, keeping its hands free for holding food as it eats soft fruits, nuts and shoots in its Indian forest home. Their tails enable squirrels to maintain stability when bounding through the forest canopy. This is a feature that squirrels share with some monkeys.

The common hamster Cricetus cricetus has no shortage of supplies and can literally fill its face with food. Its delicate skeleton shows the size of the cheek pouches where seeds or vegetation are packed. The pouches allow the animal to collect its harvest as quickly as possible and run back to the safety of its burrow to eat in peace, using its front paws to push out the food. In addition to eating plants, hamsters have been known to eat small animals, including frogs, mice and even snakes. A wild example on display in the Museum is from Germany, where these animals get their common name meaning ‘corn-weevil’, but the species is found throughout central Europe and Russia. It is solitary and aggressive, but fortunately its close relative, the golden hamster Mesocricetus aureus of eastern Europe and the Middle East, is more friendly and is commonly kept as a pet.

One animal that has survived largely through its ability to live in a harsh environment far away from hunters is the musk ox Ovibos moschatus. This is an Ice Age survivor found today in various regions around the North Pole. The mother and calf on display in the Museum were shot on Melville Island in northern Canada in the early 19th Century by Arctic explorer Leopold McClintock. Adapted to extreme cold and poor-quality grazing, the musk ox is one of the few large animals to be found in this region. These animals were among several eaten by McClintock’s party on its long trek across the frozen islands of the North-West Passage.

Animals of the open plains have very different body shapes from tree dwellers. The oribi Ourebia ourebi is a small antelope with the characteristic long, straight legs of a fast runner, and similar to all of its relatives. Another feature of grazing animals exposed to predators on the open plains is the position of the eyes at the side of the head. This gives good all-round visibility, which, together with living in a herd with many watchful eyes, helps to keep antelopes on the alert for danger. Oribi freeze in long grass when a predator is spotted, they make whistling calls to alert others to danger, and they run stiff-legged in a ‘stotting’ gait, bouncing around and confusing any attacker who may rush the group. The oribi on display in the Museum is from the Longwe Salt Pans of Angola, in South West Africa.

Slower-moving animals often have to defend themselves against predators. The small-scaled tree pangolin Manis tricuspis is covered in scales formed of a material identical to your fingernails. When threatened, they roll into an armoured ball that is hard to attack. The specimen on display is from the Huri forest in the Congo and is one of several species of pangolin in Africa. They have long tongues covered in sticky saliva, just the thing for catching ants and termites. Their powerful claws can tear open the nests where these insects live.

The giant anteater Myrmecophaga tridactyla from South America shares some features with African pangolins, even though it evolved on a different continent and is not related to them. The similarity has come about because these animals have similar lifestyles. Anteaters too have strong claws and a long sticky tongue over 60cm in length, which can lap up ants at the rate of 150 licks a minute. At 32.7° C, their body temperature is the lowest of any land mammal; ours is 37° C.