Biodiversity
Step into a world teeming with an extraordinary richness of life. In the Biodiversity exhibition, you will discover how all life on Earth is interconnected, and why every organism has its place in the network that connects all life on the planet.
You will come face to face with an actual root system from a strangler fig, look a two-metre-long leatherback turtle in the eye and encounter a Sumatran rhinoceros – the world’s most endangered large mammal. These are more than just impressive sights. Each one helps tell the same story: all life on Earth is interconnected, and every organism has its own precise place.
What you can experience
In the exhibition, we explore some of the world’s most species-rich ecosystems and most important biodiversity hotspots. These are places with the greatest richness of species, yet they are also highly threatened: the lush green rainforest of the Udzungwa Mountains in Tanzania, where species of all sizes live side by side and the museum’s researchers continue to discover new ones; and the vibrant coral reefs of the Coral Triangle, home to countless extraordinary and colourful life forms.
Help shape a healthy ecosystem in a giant interactive installation, where flowers are as big as car tyres and bees as big as footballs. Experience the grandeur of life that is normally too small to see. Design your own flower to attract insects and support life and discover how each individual flower affects the rest of nature.
The connection between you and the rainforest is closer than you might think. The two-metre-long leatherback turtle is a reminder of this. It was born in the tropics but foraged for food in Scandinavian waters before washing ashore on the Danish coast with a stomach full of plastic fragments.
- The strangler fig’s root system: Stand before a real, three-metre-high root system and discover all the life connected to a single tree. Bats, birds and monkeys feed on its fruit, hornbills build their nests in its trunk, and fig wasps pollinate the tree – a beautiful example of the interdependence of species.
- The leatherback turtle: See the two-metre-long turtle that washed ashore on the Danish west coast with a stomach full of plastic.
- The Sumatran rhinoceros: Meet the world’s most endangered rhino species and discover how it spreads life as it moves through the forest.
- The giant clam: Clams are usually small, but this giant clam is more than one and a half metres long. It became part of the museum’s collection in 1826.
- The corals: Beautiful corals from the museum’s historic collections, displayed alongside examples of the threats facing reefs today.
- The insects: Elegant, beautiful and colourful beetles and larvae, which make up the majority of our biodiversity.
Your everyday life depends on biodiversity
Biodiversity is not just colourful and beautiful to look at, it is essential to life. It purifies our water, pollinates our crops and provides us with food, medicine and raw materials. Without it, there would be no food, no medicine and no future.
A tree is more than just a tree. It provides food for pollinators, hunting grounds for birds and a home for a hornbill’s nest. Take away the fruit, and the bats lose their food. Take away the bats, and the frogs lose an important part of their food supply. Life upon life upon life: everything is interconnected, and every organism has its own niche to fill.
This is the fascinating idea at the heart of the exhibition: nature is not a collection of individual species, but a wealth of relationships. This network keeps the planet healthy, and when one strand is broken, the entire system feels the impact.
The world’s rainforests are shrinking at an alarming rate, and coral reefs are threatened by rising ocean temperatures. But the story is not all bleak: humans are transforming ecosystems on a massive scale, but we also have the power to protect them. In the exhibition, you will encounter positive stories of successful conservation and nature’s return.
