Wildlife Museum

Wildlife Museum

The Wildlife Museum is one of the popular destinations in KFRI, with over 3000 visitors annually, including trainees from the forest department, the public and students from various universities and colleges across India. The Wildlife Museum was established in the Department of Wildlife Biology to display the rare specimens of wildlife that were collected as part of different research programmes of the department. The specimens are primarily stored as wet collections, with over 800 specimens collected from various forest areas and reservoirs in the State of Kerala, including about 135 species of fish, 35 amphibians, 76 reptiles, including 41 snakes, 16 species of mammals and several stuffed specimens, collections of wildlife footprints and several invertebrates. These collections form a valuable resource for researchers.

Mammal Collections

Major attractions in the mammalian collections are Little Indian porpoise (Neophocaena phocaenoides), Spiny dormouse (Platacanthomys lasiurus), Small Indian civet (Viverricula indica), Palm civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus), Flying fox (Pteropus giganteus), Smooth coated otter, (Lutrogale perspicillata) and an albino specimen of Greater Bandicoot Rat (Bandicota indica). Apart from this, the skins of Travancore Flying Squirrel and Indian Giant Squirrel and the pugmarks of a number of mammals including tiger, wild boar, spotted deer, and wild dog also displayed in the museum.

Fish collections

The fish collections include several rare and endangered species, including Deccan mahseer (Tor khudree), Periyar garra (Garra surendranathanii), Malabar Swamp eel (Monopterus fossorius), Hughes's stone sucker (Garra hughi), Korhi barb (Hypselobarbus micropogon), Aruli barb (Puntius arulius) and Red Line Torpedo barb (Sahyadria denisonii).

Herpetofaunal collections

Thirty-five amphibian species were preserved in the museum and collected from various regions of the state. The important specimens include threatened species such as Purple frog (Nasikabatrachus sahyadrensis), Small tree frog (Rhacophorus lateralis) and Malabar night frog (Nyctibatrachus major). The reptile collections include more than 75 species, and the majority are snakes. Interesting species include Southern Flying Lizard (Draco dussumieri), Mugger crocodile (Crocodylus palustris), Indian rock python (Python molurus), and embryo of Indian rat snake (Ptyas mucosus).

Other collections and displays

The museum's pugmark collections include tiger, tigress, wild boar, wild dog, and Spotted Deer. The museum also has a collection of different stages of the horns of sambar deer. Species involved in the illegal wildlife trade, such as Star tortoise, Sand boa, Painted bat and Barn owl, are also displayed in the museum.

The museum also has collections of several display posters on the endemic or threatened animals of Kerala and summaries of the research projects carried out by the Department of Wildlife Biology.