Collections

The museum's display was initially made up of the zoological collections of the Gioenia Academy of Catania and the Aradas malacological collection. Later on, it would be enriched with other important collections of great historical and scientific value.

In particular, worth mentioning is the collection of over 160 birds donated in 1911 by the Circolo dei Cacciatori of Catania, and so is the collection of the Baron Michele Auteri, consisting of a thousand mainly exotic birds, which was donated in 1923 by the noblewoman Angelina Paternò Castello di Biscari.

In 1986, thanks to an extraordinary contribution from the former regional province of Catania, the Museum acquired several specimens of non-European mammals, including several large ones (including a polar bear, an elk, a tiger, etc.).

In 1989 the Baglieri and Baglieri-Benanti ornithological collections, which include over 500 Sicilian specimens, were acquired.

The acquisitions of the large entomological collections Briganti (about 30,000 Staphylinid Beetles) and Ragusa (about 5,800 European Lepidoptera, over 8,500 European Beetles and 18,000 Sicilian Beetles) date back to the early 1990s, the latter of which was donated by the Institute of Experimental Citrus Culture of Acireale.