On a normal day, students who pass through the main doors of Science Hall would not know how different it is from the others on campus. But just down the hall, at a corner on the lower level is a door that reads “Teaching Museum.” In it are a few flying squirrels, frozen in their flight, near a porcupine gnawing on a tree branch as if no one else is around.

This is Room 59. It is not listed on the visitor’s brochure or in the campus directory. The Internet isn’t any help either.

How these stuffed animals relate to a science and technology university starts with a mystery. The search for the answer begins with a visit to the place itself.

Greeting visitors to the room is “Chilly Willy,” an Adelie penguin. At first glance, Chilly Willy looks fake, but James Dinsmore, professor of animal ecology, said it is the real thing.

“They all are real stuffed animals,” he said with assurance.

The teaching museum is an animal ecology facility. Animals in the room range from a ruby-throated hummingbird, barely bigger than the cap of a ballpoint pen, to an eight-foot-long bison. All of them are kept in glass cases, except for a snapping turtle on the floor and an albatross perched on a case.

Dinsmore said the room is used by animal ecology and biology students. He said the specimens also model for art students. Occasionally, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts and 4-H members come for a visit as well.

“The younger they are, the more wide-eyed they are,” said John Burnett, student services specialist for the Department of Animal Ecology. Burnett gets the job of guiding the occasional tours in the museum. He said people are always amazed that there is such a museum at Iowa State.

Some of the animals in the facility are rare, like a whooping crane, a duck-billed platypus and a baby tapir. A small case holds a pair of passenger pigeons, formerly abundant in North America, now extinct.

“[The kids] always want to know whether we went out and killed these animals,” Burnett said.

A river otter in the room was caught near Cambridge in 1881. Dinsmore said it was perhaps the last of the original river otters seen by anyone in central Iowa before the animal was reintroduced in 1985. He said a lot of the specimens previously belonged to individuals.

“They shoot and stuff and have their own display,” Dinsmore said. “It was kind of a gentlemen’s hobby.”

One such owner was O.P. “Mike” Allert, a pioneer naturalist from Giard. A large portion of the birds in the teaching museum came from him. Records show Iowa State bought Allert’s collection and his glass cases for $200 in 1944. A plaque next to the museum door bears his name today.

Another individual related to the museum is William T. Hornaday, a famous animal conservationist. He left Iowa State in 1873 at the end of his sophomore year and went on to become the first director of what is today the Bronx Zoo, according to the Dictionary of American Biography. Today, a memorial slate outside the southwest corner of LeBaron Hall commemorates him.

Other than birds, the teaching museum used to have skeletons of monkeys, gorillas and chimpanzees before they were given to the anthropology department, Dinsmore said. The collection is now placed on the third floor of Curtiss Hall.

John Anderson, associate director of University Relations, related a story of an ISU camel.

In “Sketches of Iowa State College,” John B. Hungerford wrote that Iowa State got its camel in the 1870s from a circus, when, during a parade through Ames, the circus camel “gave a plunge, toppled over and died.” A student got the dead animal and subsequently stuffed it.

But the camel is not in the teaching museum today.

Somehow, the story goes, water leaked over the camel one day and soaked into its body, Anderson said.

“The camel burst,” he said. “[It] met a second demise as a result of a burst pipe.”

The camel popped more than 100 years ago, but records show Science Hall was built in 1915, only 87 years ago.

Anderson said the history of the museum can actually be traced back to the Old Main, the building that used to house the entire Iowa State College. The museum was later moved to the third floor of Morrill Hall after it was completed in 1891. Iowa State’s 13th Biennial Report cited that the move was partly to reduce fire hazards in Old Main; alcohol was used to store some specimens. Despite the move, Old Main burned down in 1902 and was replaced by Beardshear Hall.

Nobody is sure when the museum moved to its present location. Bruce Menzel, professor and chairman of the Department of Animal Ecology, gave his best guess of mid-1950s. Dinsmore said it was already there when he was a student at Iowa State in the 1960s.

The past years have taken their toll on the facility. Menzel said he is trying to get the museum floor retiled as some pieces have come loose and others have cracked.

“It would be a big job,” he said. “We have to remove the cases and temporarily relocate somewhere else.”

Burnett thinks the facility could be updated.

“It is a dusty museum,” he said. “It doesn’t attract a lot of attention.”

Burnett said he also would like to have the glass on the cases replaced. He said one of his biggest worries is having children fall into the cases and hurt themselves. During tours, Burnett and his student guides always have to stress that visitors not lean on the glass.

“It would be nice if we have the money to get it kid-proofed,” he said.

As for the stuffed animals, Dinsmore said they are in “not too bad a shape.”

In fact, a little combing may be just what a striped skunk needs. A peacock would have wanted cobwebs out of its crown. A pair of chimney swifts could use a lift; together with their stand, they had fallen off the shelf and landed on the head of a red-headed woodpecker.

Although it would be nice to have more people visit the museum, Dinsmore said the department doesn’t have time or personnel to give tours frequently.

“You just have to say `no’ to something,” he said. “It’s unfortunate.”

However, anyone is welcome to look around. The museum is generally open between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. on weekdays.

“This is an open museum for people to look around,” Menzel said.