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  1. Homepage
  2. Discover & Learn
  3. Animal factsheets

Animal factsheets

Discover the astonishing variety of mammals, birds, reptiles, marine life and more in the Australian Museum collections.

  • Updated
    24/05/22

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Giant Golden Orb-weaving spider

Spiders

Learn more about spiders, their origins, and how they are classified. Discover factsheets from the Arachnology collection, which includes the largest collection of funnel-web spiders in Australia.

Spider diversity
Dangerous spiders
Factsheets
Learn more

Short-beaked echidna

Mammals

Discover Australia's mammals - all of which have hair or fur, produce milk and are warm-blooded.

Monotremes
Marsupials
Placentals
Learn more

Frog on a fern leave

Australia's native frogs

More than 240 species of frog have been discovered in Australia! Explore our frog factsheets about learn more about our native amphibians.

Find out more

School of reef fish

Fishes

Immerse yourself in the underwater world of fishes and discover some of Sydney Harbour's fish friends. The Australian Museum's Ichthyology collection has more than 2,500 type specimens of fishes, some of which date back to the 1800s!

Learn more

Bird pollinating

Birds

Find out more about the unique and ingenious ways Australian birds have adapted to habitats. The Australian Museum has one of the largest ornithological collections in the Southern Hemisphere, containing a wide cross-section of these feathered animals.

Ornithology
Find out more

Butterfly

Insects

Explore the fascinating world of insects from beautiful butterflies to creepy crawly cockroaches! The Australian Museum Entomology collection contains mostly Australian species, but there is a significant non-Australian representation of beetles, psocids (booklice), flies, butterflies and moths.

Entomology
Learn more

Red-bellied Black Snake Pseudechis porphyriacus

Reptiles

Discover a diverse group of animals including turtles, lizards, snakes and crocodiles, including the largest living reptile in the world: the Australian Crocodile!

Herpetology
Find out more

Beach Worm

Worms

The Australian Museum houses an important collection of earthworms, bristle worms and leeches, including an extensive bristle worm collection from Australia and Indo-Pacific. Learn about these resilient creatures that have virtually conquered every habitat on the planet!

Terrestrial Invertebrates
Polychaetes
Learn more

Anemones

Jellyfish, anemones and corals

Discover factsheets from this ancient group of animals that have lived on earth for more than 650 million years.

Cnidarians
Learn more

Pyura spinifera

Sea squirts and sea tulips

Discover sea squirts and sea tulips - with over 80 species in Sydney alone. The Australian Museum's Marine Invertebrate collection houses more than 1600 urochordates (predominantly ascidian) lots, mainly from Australia and Antarctica.

Marine life
Learn more

Close-up of a nudibranch

Molluscs

Learn more about this unique and varied animal group, molluscs are very diverse in appearance and habitat.

Malacology
Read more

WA biodiversity

Sea stars and sea urchins

Did you know that Sydney alone has more than 120 species of echinoderms? Step into the underwater world and learn more about these spiny creatures.

Echinoderms
Marine life
Read more

Planktonic Polychaete worm

Plankton

Learn more about the varieties of plankton - phytoplankton, zooplankton and holoplankton - and learn why the Bluewater Zone is so important to the survival of the Great Barrier Reef.

Marine life
Read more

King crab

Crustaceans

Find out more about crustaceans - crabs, lobsters, prawns, barnacles - and what makes them such interesting creatures. The Australian Museum has a long tradition of studying crustaceans and this is reflected in the extensive Marine Invertebrates collection.

Marine Invertebrates
Learn more

Scolopendrid Centipede

Centipedes and millipedes

Step into the multi-legged world of these crawling creatures and learn how important they are to our environment.

Myriapods
More details

Sydney Cockatoo

Wildlife of Sydney

Explore the unique habitats of Sydney's wildlife and what kind of animals will you find in and around Sydney Harbour.

Habitats
Animals resources
Fishes of Sydney Harbour
Find out more

J24324 Fromia polypora

Sydney Seastars

Assists in the identification of seastars (or starfish) encountered in the Sydney region (defined as between, Gosford to the north and Bundeena to the south) in depths to 30 metres.

Read more

Grey-headed Flying-fox (Pteropus poliocephalus)

Australian Bats

Most bats are nocturnal animals, meaning they search for prey at night and sleep during the day. Find out more about some of Australia’s bat species and where bats are found.

Flying mammals
Mammalogy
Learn more

Bird specimen under glass display

Australia’s extinct animals

Learning about Australia’s extinct fauna helps us to create links through time that relate the animals of the past with those of today.

Extinction theories
Fact sheets
Read More

Death adder snake

Dangerous Australian animals

Meet some of Australia's most dangerous animals and learn about the different ways they poison and catch their prey. The Australian Museum has an extensive collection of Australia's deadliest animals to find out more about why they are so dangerous to humans.

Learn more

C&R building

Australian Museum Research Institute (AMRI)

AMRI brings together scientific expertise and world-class research infrastructure to increase our knowledge of the world around us and inform environmental decision-making for a better future.

Biodiversity & geodiversity
Collections-based research
Discover more


You may also be interested in...

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Dave Pross examines grinding grooves at Quad Pad

Australian Archaeology

The Australian Museum holds a large number of cultural material and objects obtained from archaeological sites in New South Wales, as well as items from various regions throughout Australia.

Archaeological Collection Deposition
Policy
Protocols
Read more

Weird Whales books

Rare books

The Research Library holds a significant collection of rare books. This collection is regularly used in the work of Museum scientists.

Natural history
Early European exploration
Contact form
Find out more

The birds of Great Britain. By John Gould, F.R.S., &c. ...

John Gould: books and illustrations

With the obsession of a collector and an eye for artistic talent, John Gould succeeded in creating one of the most recognisable and long-lasting brand names in natural history.

Explore the activities of this legendary 'bird man'.
Discover more

Illustration of a butterfly

The Scott sisters collection

With their collecting boxes, notebooks and paintbrushes, Harriet and Helena Scott entered the masculine world of science and became two of 19th-century Australia’s most prominent natural history illustrators.

History
Stories
Art of Science app
Explore the collection

Egyptian Mummy

Yellow coffin from Akhmim

A mummy, well wrapped in bandages in a painted coffin without a lid from Thebes in Egypt, was gifted to the Museum in 1912 by brewer, politician, and philanthropist, Robert Lucas-Tooth.

18 October 2022
Read more

Hand painted glass plate negative of fish

Photographic collections

With over 15,000 glass plate negatives in our collection, many have rarely been viewed since they were originally developed. The subjects in the glass plates vary from fish specimens to anthropological displays.

Expedition photography
Staff photographers
Find out more

Entomology Collection Area

Entomology

Entomology is the study of insects including flies, cicadas, moths, earwigs, fleas, bugs, cockroaches, bees, dragonflies, and termites.

Butterflies
Beetles
Find out more

Handwritten rare notebook

Museum Archives

The Museum Archives cares for the Museum’s institutional memory.

Collected papers
Photographic archives
History
Explore the Archives

Frog on a branch

Herpetology

Herpetology is the study of amphibians, including frogs, toads, salamanders and caecilians, and reptiles, including lizards, snakes, turtles and crocodiles.

Amphibians
Reptiles
Find out more

Theban mummy coffin detail

World Cultures Collection

Explore the material culture of indigenous peoples throughout the world in the Australian Museum's World Cultures Collection.

Egyptian
Indonesian
African
American
Chinese
Find out more

iE076356+02

Japanese Antarctica expedition and the Shirase sword

A Samurai Sword in the Museum's collection symbolises a spirit of scientific co-operation and friendship between nations. Find out how Australia, Japan and Antarctic exploration are linked through the history of this sword.

Shirase sword
Historic expedition
Read more

The birds of Australia. Supplement / by John Gould.

John Gould’s Australian publications

John Gould was an immensely successful publisher. Over the course of his lifetime he produced 21 titles, 15 which were folio sets. In total, with his team of artists, lithographers and colourists, he produced 2999 unique plates.

Bird illustrations
Contributions to science
Discover more

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The Australian Museum respects and acknowledges the Gadigal people as the First Peoples and Traditional Custodians of the land and waterways on which the Museum stands.
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We pay our respect to Aboriginal Elders and recognise their continuous connection to Country.
This website may contain names, images and voices of deceased Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

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Photo of two painted shields

The Australian Museum respects and acknowledges the Gadigal people as the First Peoples and Traditional Custodians of the land and waterways on which the Museum stands.

Image credit: gadigal yilimung (shield) made by Uncle Charles Chicka Madden