Documentation of living nature
The zoological collections of the LIB document the diversity of living nature on our planet. They show the state of ecosystems, species and populations of the present and past centuries. These archives, which contain information on space, time, phenotypes and genotypes, form the basis for researchers to understand changes in biodiversity and make predictions for the future. Changes are due to both the natural evolutionary process and the increasing overexploitation of nature by humans.
16 million objects in the collection
With more than 16 million specimens, including numerous type series, the original metre of a species, the zoological collections of the LIB are among the most important in Germany. Some parts of the collections are even among the most important in the world, such as the collections of crustaceans, fish, ungulates, tunicates, mites and annelids in the Museum der Natur Hamburg. The museum has the third largest archive of marine organisms in Germany with the country's largest fish collection.
World's largest comparative collection
The Museum Koenig Bonn is home to the world's largest comparative collection of electric spiders and a beetle collection with over 2.5 million specimens, which make up almost half of the museum's collection. The bird collection contains important local series of birds of prey and songbirds that the museum's founder, Alexander Koenig, created in the 19th and 20th centuries. The extensive mammal collection, with its important African artefacts and extinct species, mainly contains small mammals such as shrews and bats.
