Wild Americas - Part 3: Jungle House

This is the third installment in a series of posts touring my British zoo, named Wild Americas. You can read an introduction for it here.

In this post, we're going to continue our tour of the Tropical House with a visit to the Jungle House, the second of three zones. The entrance to the Jungle House can be seen below; I've added a PVC curtain as real-life tropical houses often have these to keep in free-roaming animals, like birds. Sadly, there's no American birds in the game but a tropical house like this would definitely have them in real-life. Also note that the PVC curtain was made using scenery items as the walkthrough exhibit DLC had not been released yet:

The first thing you see once through the entrance is a wall of dense foliage. I also added a little glimpse of an animal enclosure behind it as a little teaser for what's to come:

Following the path around the corner, there's more dense tropical foliage, as well as a row of smaller exhibits (please ignore the vine which I didn't realise wasn't connected to the wall). For the plants, I didn't stick to just American species as there weren't enough of them in the game to do that. I just used any plant which fitted the vibe (I'm pretty sure many tropical houses do the same in real-life):

The exhibits belong to two Amazonian giant centipedes (right), some red-eyed tree frogs (middle) and two green iguanas (left). I used the same style for the exhibits as those in the Swamp House to keep things consistent:

There's also a botanical exhibit in this area for the tree fern which can be found in tropical areas worldwide, including South America: 

Around the side of the exhibits is a small maintenance area where I added various tools and equipment for staff to use for the maintenance of the tropical house. The door also provides access to the spectacled caiman enclosure in the Swamp House:

The path then cuts through some foliage towards our next animal encounter. Also, you may or may not have noticed but I used a thinner than usual path throughout the tropical house as the default one was too thick. This was achieved by using the "staff path trick", where you place down staff paths and delete segments of it to be replaced by regular paths, bit by bit:

In the centre of the Jungle House is an enclosure for Galápagos giant tortoises. If this was a real zoo, Wild Americas would be one of the few to have these animals in the UK. There's three of them living in this enclosure; I didn't want to add too many as the enclosure isn't that large:

I added a low wall around the enclosure to provide a clearer view of the animals. In real-life, this might encourage guests to touch the animals, so I've added signs instructing them not to:

The enclosure is surrounded by dense foliage to add the impression it's in the middle of the jungle. There isn't much foliage inside it because, realistically, it wouldn't last long before being eaten. The shed at the back disguises the keeper gate (the short keeper gate wasn't released at the time I built the enclosure) and would probably contain a few tools for maintaining the enclosure:

Another view of the tortoise enclosure; it features a natural substrate, a small pool to wallow in and a few small rocks:

Opposite the tortoise enclosure is a waterfall which I added because most of the tropical houses I've been to seemed to have a water feature:

The waterfall is situated in the centre of the house in an area of dense foliage. The tallest tree in the house, a tamarind, sits above it:

The next enclosure you come across on your route through the Jungle House belongs to Colombian white-faced capuchin monkeys. It features tall viewing windows and the floor is also raised slightly so that the monkeys aren't so low down:

There's lots of logs and ropes for climbing and the enclosure is netted-over to prevent escapes:

The path then curves around the tortoise enclosure towards another trio of smaller exhibits:

These belong to a boa constrictor (right), a goliath birdeater (middle) and some golden poison frogs (left). The goliath birdeater is a new addition which was moved in from the Swamp House:

You can also get another look at the tortoises from this side:

The view ahead; if we get some birds in future, I'd probably try and squeeze a few aviaries in this area. They'd only have to be small as they'd only be used to house the birds when they're not allowed to free-roam:

This is the exit to the Jungle House and the entrance to the Desert House, our next destination!