In the spring of 2018 we built rockwork to hide a service wall in Helsinki Zoo’s new Eurasian Lynx Habitat.
Lynx habitat
Tag: helsinki zoo
Rock for gundi exhibit
Gundis, sometimes known as comb rats, are small rodents which are native to North Africa. They are unusual in the fact that they don’t drink water. They get all their moisture from their food. They also like to chew stones so we a had to make a very strong mix for the artificial rock here.
We made an EPS armature (shape) and coated it with a very hard fine concrete mix. On top of this there is a finer ‘carve’ render which is given the rock texture and coloured. We also built in recesses for heat lamps. Electric conduit tubes were built within the rock so the electrician could easily connect later.
Scroll to bottom of page to see Helsinki Zoo video of Gundis in action
Thanks to zoo keeper Alina Kallio for the animal photos. Check out Alina’s and Timo’s blog here Frog Trail.
White Faced Sakis enjoy their new trees
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)
