Insects and Invertebrates
The Animal Kingdom is made up of two main groups – animals with backbones (vertebrates) and animals without backbones (invertebrates). The vertebrates include fish, reptiles, amphibians, birds and mammals. The invertebrates, a very much larger group include insects, animals with shells (molluscs) and very many curious groups of land, freshwater and marine organisms.
Insects
Goliath Beetle Goliathus regius. The heaviest insect in the world, native to tropical forests of central Africa.
The museum's insect collection is the second largest in Ireland with over a quarter of a million insects. The oldest specimens were collected in 1834. Most of the insects are from I...
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Morpho Butterflies
There are around 80 species of the genus Morpho. They are found only in the Neotropical Region (South America including Mexico and Central America).The blue is not a pigment colour (pigments are materials that change the colour of light by selective absorption-dyes are an example). Instead Morpho...
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Molluscs
A drawer of Irish freshwater molluscsMolluscs (Phylum Mollusca) are a very large and important group of animals that includes snails, slugs, clams and squids. Species can be found on land and in the sea and their study is usually split into land and freshwater and marine species. The mollusc (she...
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