Animal Diversity Web - U. Michigan Museum of Zoology

Animal Diversity Web (ADW) is an online database of animal natural history, distribution, classification, and conservation biology at the University of Michigan. ADW is a large searchable encyclopedia of the natural history of animals. Every day, thousands of classroom students and informal visitors use it to answer animal questions. Other sites specialize in local, endangered, or particular kinds of animals. We aim to be as comprehensive as possible. ADW provides a way to make the contents of research museums available globally for teaching and research. So far, our efforts have been directed mainly at mammals. Photographs of scientific specimens are available for representative species from most mammal families. We've also included several hundred Quick Time Virtual Reality Movies of skulls. These allow the user to "rotate" the specimen, providing an excellent impression of its 3-dimensional structure. We've written in depth about and illustrated many of the characteristics of interest to students of mammals. An important goal for the future is to expand to cover other groups of animals and include other media such as animal behavior video.