It involves a lot of different skills, but they're not tremendously difficult. If you know woodworking, building what amounts to a big box with a few moving parts is not hard. I think sculpting the rock ledges would be the most challenging, along with the very realistic paint job. You'd need good visual-spatial sense to figure out how to put elements of the decor into a useful configuration. But if you're good at research, you can figure out what habitat your pet needs and then mimic that.

I think it wound up looking like a giant diorama with a lizard in it. :D I'm quite a fan of the style. When I was little, the St. Louis zoo was among the first to go all-out with realistic habitats and they hired some truly brilliant artists. It was great fun to watch. I like seeing what people devise for enrichment.

I haven't done anything near that fancy. I've done terraria and aquaria. Well, and the yard is laissez faire permaculture.