The world famous St.Petersburg Zoological museum is one of the largest of its kind. It was founded in 1728 as the zoological department of Kunstkamera. In 1832 it became a separate academic establishment. It was constructed by the architect Giovanni Lucchini. The major contribution in creating collection of the museum was made by Brandt, who became the first director of Zoological museum. The first collections, owned by Karl Ernst von Bar, Fedor Brandt and Alexander Middendorf, were supplemented by the new exhibits collected during the expeditions by the staff of the Zoological Institute and major Russian experts in natural history, such as Pyotr Pallas, Nikolai Przhevalsky, Pyotr Kozlov and Nikolai Miklukho-Maklai. As the collection was widened fast the museum moved to the other part of the building. After the reconstruction of the premises and movement of the museum pieces Zoological museum was opened.

In 1930, the museum became a part of the Zoological institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In fact it is a laboratory for research in the field of zoology. Nowadays the exhibition department of the institute owned 12 laboratories, two biological research stations on the White and the Baltic seas, scientific library and the information-publishing department. At present, about 40,000 animals are included in the exhibitions of the Museum, and its scientific collections include more than 15,000,000 specimens: invertebrates, fish, amphibia, reptiles, and a multitude of birds and mammals, large number of rare and even extinct animals, a collection of animal anomalies are on display and it attracts about 700,000 to 900,000 people annually to visit the Museum.