“Everything is over.” With that short and painful phrase, a Sudanese government official summed up the loss of nearly a century and a half of history after war destroyed the headquarters of the Sudan Natural History Museum in central Khartoum, stripping the country of thousands of taxidermied and live endangered animals, as well as rare reference specimens.
In the first days after fighting erupted in April 2023, activists on social media called for food and water to be provided to save the live animals. When that proved impossible, cages were opened, and the animals fled, even though some of the reptiles were venomous snakes.
The museum, officially affiliated with the University of Khartoum, lies about one kilometer from the Sudanese army’s general command headquarters in central Khartoum.
Its close proximity led to severe damage from clashes and shelling between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces, which later took control of the surrounding area for more than a year.
Dr. Othman Ali Haj Al-Amin, Dean of the Faculty of Science at the University of Khartoum, said: “We lost thousands of taxidermied animals, birds, and reptiles that are more than 150 years old.”
“It is most likely that the live animals were stolen or looted and did not die,” he added. “We did not find remains or skeletons of those animals inside the museum.”
Al-Amin broke down in tears as he described to Asharq Al-Awsat the scale of devastation inflicted on one of the world’s oldest natural history museums.
“We lost about 2,000 taxidermied animal specimens, in addition to more than 600 endangered reference specimens that were on display, and nearly all geological records, including animal, plant, and rock fossils,” he said.
“The greatest loss was around 100 species representing all families of animals, birds, and reptiles that had been cared for and preserved for decades.”
Among them were fossil bird specimens collected between 1885 and 1945 that cannot be replaced, as well as a Kordofan giraffe, an endangered subspecies.
The war also claimed “the oldest crocodile, which had lived in the museum for many years and had been cared for since it was an egg,” along with numerous reptiles, including venomous snakes, scorpions, and a Nile monitor lizard.
A taxidermied lioness was recovered and transferred to the university’s veterinary faculty.
Asharq Al-Awsat learned that the International Committee of the Red Cross attempted in those early days to evacuate civilians, including university students who were trapped inside the museum for weeks, as well as to move live and taxidermied animals. The effort failed due to intense fighting in the heart of Khartoum.
According to the Sudanese official, the preserved specimens were collected in the mid-19th century by British army officers.
During World War II, they were transferred from the Sudan National Museum to the Natural History Museum next to the University of Khartoum, which has managed them since its establishment in 1929.
Al-Amin said the museum housed specimens illustrating biodiversity from across Sudan, including South Sudan before its secession, as well as samples gifted to Sudan by international museums.
The Sudan Natural History Museum included multiple sections, among them halls displaying rare bird species, another devoted to animal skulls preserved for decades, a section for medicinal and aromatic plants, geological rock samples collected from ancient eras and environments, and enclosures for live animals.
The dean said restoring the museum to its original state would require many years of work and significant funding. He voiced pessimism about recovering the rare animals, historical specimens, and old records lost during the war.
Many live animals were likely deliberately killed or died of hunger and thirst, he said, while taxidermied animals and rare rock and herb specimens — painstakingly collected, sorted, and classified over many years by researchers — were looted.
The Natural History Museum was a scientific and cultural institution dedicated to the study of biodiversity and natural specimens, and one of the oldest museums in Sudan.
