A cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus). The cheetah has a top speed of up to 114 kilometres per hour but this can only be maintained for short distances of a few hundred metres. Their main food is mostly gazelles, impalas and other small buck and they can hunt the young of wildebeests and zebra. A cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus). The cheetah has a top speed of up to 114 kilometres per hour but this can only be maintained for short distances of a few hundred metres. Their main food is mostly gazelles, impalas and other small buck and they can hunt the young of wildebeests and zebra.

Skip to page content

Primary navigation

Gallery 6

Amphibians, bats, British mammals, domestic dogs, flightless birds, reptiles and small mammals

Walter Rothschild was fascinated by marsupials and flightless birds and kept many alive in Tring Park. Almost every species of marsupial is to be found in this gallery, along with a wide variety of other specimens including reptiles and domestic dogs.

Gallery 6 is currently closed for major refurbishment and is due to reopen in January 2009. You can see the work in progress through a viewing window in Gallery 5. The Rothschild Room and much of Gallery 5 are also closed until late December 2008 as part of this work. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

Tree kangaroo

Tree kangaroo. Walter Rothschild discovered a new species of this marsupial tree kangeroo when he saw a lady wearing a fur stole around her neck while he was in a London park. He bought the stole and took it to the Natural History Museum for identification.

Indian pangolin

The Indian pangolin is covered in horny scales that overlap and protect the body. Pangolins are excellent climbers, but often walk on their hind legs. They have no teeth and use their long sticky tongues to eat insects.

Fat dormouse

Native to mainland Europe, the fat dormouse was considered a delicacy by the Romans. They were introduced to Tring Park in 1902 by Walter Rothschild. The population has since spread to within a 25-mile radius of Tring.

Giant moa

The giant moa is a flightless bird that is now extinct. This model has been reconstructed based on real skeletons, using feathers from other flightless birds. It once travelled in London with Rothschild in an open-topped taxi.

Duck billed platypus

The duck-billed platypus is an endangered species that lives in Australian wetlands and rivers. A mammal that lays eggs, its beak is sensitive to touch and to water-based electrical signals, and the male has a poisonous spur on its hind foot.

Thylacine - Tasmanian wolf

The thylacine or Tasmanian wolf is an extinct marsupial and, unlike its herbivore kangaroo cousin, is a meat-eating predator. It was wiped out by European settlers in the early 1900s after being blamed for killing sheep.

Print version