Museum
Grant Museum of Zoology
43 locals recommend,
Why locals recommend it
This tiny museum was set up to house a zoological and entomological teaching collection for the University of London (now UCL) and comprises over 68,000 specimens. It’s really refreshing to learn about the animal kingdom by studying skeletons in cases and specimens in jars. The most unusual object is a tightly packed jar of 18 moles. The museum is open Monday to Saturday 1-5 pm, but I recommend getting to one of their evening events if possible, especially the “dead, life drawing” classes.
Location
21 University St
London, England
Tips from locals
Housed in a former Edwardian library belonging to University College London, the Grant Museum retains the air of an avid Victorian collector’s house, but visitors are engaged in dialogue about the distant evolutionary past via the most modern means available, including iPads and smartphones. The museum’s 67,000 specimens include the remains of many rare and extinct creatures, including skeletons of the dodo and the zebra-like quagga (which lived in South Africa and was hunted out of existence in the 1880s), as well as pure oddities, not least the jar of moles. Don’t miss the Micrarium – a kind of booth walled with little illuminated microscope slides.
Housed in a former Edwardian library belonging to University College London, the Grant Museum retains the air of an avid Victorian collector’s house, but visitors are engaged in dialogue about the distant evolutionary past via the most modern means available, including iPads and smartphones. The mus…
From a jar of tiny moles to a huge elephant skull that helps to explain the Cyclops myth (its large central cavity could well be a monocular eye socket), there is plenty here to draw gasps of amazement.
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