TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — An owl has double the neck bones of a human. That’s for added flexibility, according to Allison Ashcroft, the Education Program Manager at the Tallahassee Museum.

She is holding an owl named Mabel on the 52-acre museum, under a canopy of trees.

“And the reason they have to turn their head so far is because their eyes are so big and their head is so small that there is no room for them to move their eyes inside of their head,” said Ashcroft.

The owl’s prehistoric predecessors are also at the museum, courtesy of the metal dinosaurs from Florida-born artist Jim Gary.

“They are all made from recycled car parts,” said Ashcroft. “The idea is that dinosaurs died. They went into the ground. We get our fossil fuels from the ground. We put those in our cars, and he turned the cars back into dinosaurs.”

Ashcroft says children love them.

“We explain to them that the dinosaurs would have actually been twice this size,” said Ashcroft. “So, it really gives them an idea of just how big that dinosaur would have been 160 million years ago.”

The museum’s outdoor path leads to animal sightings in natural Florida habitats.

There is a zip-line course in the museum’s canopy of trees and an 1880s era farm.

All this helped keep Ashcroft here for nearly a decade.

“It’s a beautiful place to work. It’s always a different day. The kids love it here,” she said. “It’s always exciting to see them learn and excited to learn. It’s exciting to see them love what I love too!”