Maharaja’s College Zoology Museum is India’s oldest college museum. It started functioning in 1874, a year before the institute was upgraded to the status of a college. The museum is a paradise for anyone interested in the discipline of zoology, natural history and allied subjects. It displays more than 1500 specimens. Most of the items on display at the museum were acquired under the special instructions of British officials who were associated with the college in the colonial era. The museum offers immense potential for research and many of the specimens available here are recorded as endangered, rare and very rare in the red data book of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). These include the Australian kangaroo, duck-billed platypus, American armadillo, South American lungfish, kiwi from New Zealand, Mexican horned lizard, African ostrich, seal from the North Atlantic, heloderma, sponges, flatworms, and corals. Most of the specimens are considered to be the oldest available ones in India. Especially, with the legal reforms and ban on taxonomy, it is impossible to replicate the vast collection of taxidermised specimens available at the museum.

The rare and unique collection, curated from all corners of the world offers immense possibility for research. Maharaja’s College Zoology Museum is one of the 50 international museums in the databank of K.G. Saur Verlag Gmbh & Co, Germany and is included in the famous natural history museums of the world.