Zoology Museum
The Department of Zoology, Entomology and Fisheries Sciences Museum has a long history having been opened 10th September 1963 by a pre-eminent Evolutionary Biologist Sir Julian Huxley. The Museum has largely served as a teaching facility in Makerere University for Biological Sciences, Fine Art and Architecture students.
Over the years, the Museum has however assumed an important and challenging role of being the major referral collection of specimens of animal nature. Today the Museum curates more than 30,000 specimens of different kinds of animal material.
The Museum has in it holding specimens mostly collected from Uganda, with a few from Kenya, Tanzania and Europe and North America. The specimens include groups of: -
- Invertebrates (the various insect orders but with a major focus on Lepidoptera, othorptera, diptera)
- Vertebrates (fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals)
- A few Fossils
Specimens are curated variously depending of their nature, Vertebrates either as skins (stuffed or flat), fluid preserved or as osteological specimens, while invertebrates are preserved as dry pinned insects, dry insects in envelopes, or if fluid.
The museum Facility has a general gallery/display area that is open and available to Makerere University students to consult with and conduct studies and research using the specimens every working day of the week. In addition it has several stores in which specimens of different material nature are curated.