Zoological Museum of Samarkand State University

About

The zoological museum of Samarkand State University was founded in 1934 on the initiative of the brothers S. K. and K. K. Dahl together with the collector K. K. Povarova. It grew alongside the zoology department and remains the only collection of its scale in Uzbekistan.

The holdings run to around 5,000 vertebrate specimens, an entomological collection of 100,000-110,000 insects representing some 10,000 species, and an osteological collection on the formation of Central Asia's mammal fauna.

Much of what stands in the cases is barely left in the wild. The displays include the Syr Darya, large and small false shovelnose sturgeons, the grey monitor lizard and the Central Asian cobra, the Zarafshan pheasant, mute swan, great white pelican, flamingo, white and black storks, peregrine and saker falcons, lammergeier and golden eagle, the Central Asian otter, marbled polecat, Tien Shan brown bear, Bukhara deer, argali, Severtzov's sheep and goitered gazelle — all listed in Uzbekistan's Red Book, with the snow leopard on the international list as well.

The centrepiece is a Turanian tiger taken in 1935 in the Amu Darya tugai forests. The subspecies was hunted out, and the museum considers its specimen the only one of its kind anywhere.

The collection was built by several generations of the department's zoologists and the museum's taxidermists. It works today both as a research centre for systematics and faunistics and as a teaching space for schoolchildren, lyceum pupils and students.