July 2013 – Koda Creative – Artificial Rock

We were very happy to see the white faced sakis, golden lion tamarins and pygmy marmosets using the trees we had made a few months previously. It was also good to hear that the enclosure is working as it should and now needs less keeper maintenance.

I managed to take these pictures on a sunny Sunday afternoon when we were taking a break from building the sloth tree. The weather had been so nice in Finland during this visit that the animals were spending a lot of the time enjoying the outdoor part of their enclosure. I got lucky with these ones.

I wrote about the building of these trees in a previous post.

Helsinki zoo made a small video of the animals during their first explorations (scroll to bottom of page to see this)

male white faced saki — Male white faced saki

Golden lion tamarin moving up in the world

Koda Creative often build artificial trees into zoo exhibits. They usually serve some practical purpose for instance, structural supports, places to hide or to provide enrichment possibilities. Trees are generally built from steel and fine concrete. The finish is hand carved and painted appropriately with a suitable non toxic paint.

This artificial rainforest tree was built into an existing zoo enclosure for a Hoffman’s sloth, agoutis and toucans. The tree supports semi-flexible vines which lead to feeding stations and latrine for Coco the sloth. The vines were made to exactly the right diameter for Coco’s claws to help her move around the high enclosure more easily.

Materials used:
Steel, fine concrete, our own recipe epoxy and exterior grade acrylic paint.

For other examples of our trees see:

Two Jungle trees for white face sakis

Amazon aviary