Episode 22 Roar

Today on Roar, to save his life,

Ujung the gibbon needs an injection every day,

but how will the keepers get him to co-operate?

Hello and welcome to Roar. I'm Rani.

I'm Johny, and we're in the enclosure of the Asian wild dogs,

also known as dhole.

They normally hunt during the day and their prey includes rodents,

sheep, lizards and even water buffaloes.

In fact, they are capable of hunting down animals ten times their weight.

That's like me trying to wrestle a saltwater crocodile.

I don't fancy your chances!

I think we should get on with the show.

Let's make it snappy!

Coming up on Roar -

cats eat meat, so why is Melindi going bananas for our fruit treats?

Oooh! She got the whole kebab!

I'll be catching up with Etana, the biggest little baby in the park.

And we'll meet the keeper who's learning to talk to the rhinos.

But will they understand what he's got to say?

HE GROWLS

HE MOANS

HE BURPS

But first, we're going to the primate section,

because Oojiang the moloch gibbon has a serious problem.

These monkeys come from the Indonesian island of Java,

where they're an endangered species.

In fact, there's less than 2,500

in the wild, and just over 100 in captivity.

So, the collection of moloch is very important.

Jo Marden is one of the keepers who looks after them.

This is one of our many moloch gibbon cages and we've come up

to see Oojiang. He is our dominant adult male in the group.

He's currently with a mature adult female at the moment,

and he's fathered lots of children.

Moloch gibbons naturally live in small family groups,

and in with Oojiang is his mate Koolon and two of their children.

The family has always got on well but a few months ago,

the keepers noticed that there was something wrong with Dad.

Like with all our primates, we do a daily check

on what they're eating and drinking.

We started to noticed something, definitely unusual

that we hadn't seen before.

He was quite lethargic during the day and spent a lot of time sleeping.

His appetite wasn't great and he was drinking a lot as well.

With gibbons, they get most of their moisture out of their food,

and it just wasn't really quite right.

Another bad sign was that, for some reason, Oojiang's family

began to keep away from him.

This was strange because moloch gibbons

normally spend a lot of time grooming each other.

Our vet team decided to sedate him. He was given a full health check.

And some blood samples were taken. We found out that he was diabetic.

Diabetes is a medical condition. It is when the body is failing

to make enough insulin, and insulin is the chemical the body needs

to control how much sugar is in the blood.

Diabetes can be a really serious condition which means

we have to control the amount of sugar he gets daily.

If we don't, he can become quite poorly.

Gibbons eat fruit which contains a lot of sugar

and one way to control how much sugar gets into Oojiang's blood

is to control exactly what he eats.

But that was impossible while the whole family was fed together.

Before, we weren't able to monitor what he was eating.

He was still being fed with the group,

with other members of the family in the shed and outside the shed,

so we couldn't control what he was getting.

We decided to completely modify his diet.

He was getting the amount he should be getting, the right amount,

and foods that he wasn't allowed, that were high in sugar,

were kept out of his diet completely.

As well as a strictly controlled diet,

Oojiang also needs an injection of insulin

every single day.

Trying to think of how you're going to inject a monkey dailly,

with an injection,

is pretty difficult and hard to think of, so we had a lot of problems

to face from the beginning.

Without insulin, Oojiang would become very ill,

but how on earth do you get a wild animal

to have an injection every day?

We'll be back later to see

the extraordinary plan the keepers came up with.

I've popped down to the elephant paddock to meet keeper Tom King

to have a catch up with this cute elephant right here -

this is baby Etana.

How old is she now, Tom?

-Etana's just over six months old.

-Wow. And how's she getting on?

She's doing very well.

She's doing everything a little elephant should be.

Watching what the bigger elephants are doing and, you can see,

she's got a bit of branch at the moment.

She's not actually eating anything.

She's kind of playing with the food.

Because, obviously, she's still relying a lot on mother's milk.

How's she getting on with the rest of the elephants?

Is there any rivalry? There are a few other baby elephants

that aren't too much older than Etana.

We've got Uzuri, who's standing with Etana at the moment.

Uzuri's 15 months old.

They bond and interact very well.

But that's all part of elephant life.

Elephants can go to a ripe old age.

How long does it take them to get to adolescence?

To adolescence, you are looking at, for bulls, about eight or nine,

and females, probably slightly younger.

But the way an elephant grows, it grows up, then stops,

then out, then stops, and so on.

If you look at all the elephants, the highest point on the young calves

are always going to be their backbone.

If you look at the adults, the highest point is their shoulder,

so a little calf like Uzuri, at nearly 16 months now,

she's still very much going in this growth spurt stage.

What does the future hold for Etana? Will she move on from this herd,

or stick around?

With female elephants, you can keep them in the group,

because it's a matriarchal structure.

So, in the wild, females will stay with the group all their life.

They don't have to move off, whereas a male elephant is different.

Naturally, they'll be pushed out of the group.

Male elephants, we have to look at moving them on.

Females can stay for the rest of their lives.

I can't wait to see Etana grow throughout the series.

-Thanks for letting us get so close to them.

-That's all right, Johny.

It's Ask The Keeper time and I've crammed my truck full

of bright young brain-boxes and brought them to

the African Experience to test the knowledge of Bob Saville.

and see if he knows all there is to know about his pesky peckers,

and I'm talking about the ostriches right behind him now.

-Bob, you're not getting pecked away?

-No, not too bad.

It's very windy up here so we'll start with the questions.

All right, guys, fire them at Bob.

How big are their eggs?

Well, they're like a small watermelon.

They're about that size. The same shape as an ordinary egg

but about 15 chicken eggs in each one.

So about that big.

What do ostriches eat?

Out in the wild they eat seeds and berries, grass.

Basically, they do exactly the same thing here.

We also give them a few nuts to keep them going as well.

How many years has ostriches been living?

They're probably one of the oldest sorts of animals.

They haven't changed much. If you look at their feet,

they're basically the same as dinosaurs' feet.

Long big toes with a big claw on the end.

Do they build nests?

No, they basically... Loose ground.

We normally give them a big pile of sand.

They roll around and make a little depression.

They don't build nests.

How fast can they go?

About 45 miles an hour.

They don't look like they're running fast

but their strides get longer and longer.

They do travel remarkably fast when they want to.

It's time for your Killer Question.

We have to decide what it is. Give us a moment.

What do you think, then?

OK. That's too hard!

Right, OK.

Right, OK.

Now, how long would it take for an ostrich to run

from the two furthest points in the country -

Land's End to John O'Groats?

You know the distance, you know how fast they can run.

So, how long would it take them?

Shall I help you out a little bit at all?

Yes, if you've got a calculator and a road map!

The distance is 970 kilometres.

970 kilometres?

That's a great help(!)

How many miles, cos I'm an old-fashioned person?

You've got to move with the times, Bob Saville!

-Shall we tell him the answer?

-Yes, tell me the answer!

The top speed an ostrich can run is 65 kilometres.

If it was going to 970 kilometres that would take it 14 hours, Bob.

-Wow!

-I've got to say, ostriches, that is very impressive.

Bob, it looks like maths isn't your strong point,

but how did you do on the rest?

Guys, what do you think? Thumbs up or thumbs down?

Mr Saville, it's thumbs up all around.

APPLAUSE

What does an ant eat when it's ill?

Antibiotics!

Ooohh, ooh, ooh!

# Bonkers! #

Ooohh, ooh, ooh!

There's a policeman and a zookeeper chatting at the zoo.

And the policeman said...

"One of your elephants is chasing a man on a bike."

And the zookeeper said...

"Nonsense, none of my elephants can ride a bike!"

Cluck, cluck, cluck!

What's big and grey and red?

I dunno.

A sunburnt elephant.

HE LAUGHS

Boo!

Rani tells me that whenever new babies are born at the park,

she's the first to catch a glimpse.

Today, I'm the lucky one.

Keeper Helen Rose is going to introduce me to the capybara babies.

Where are they?

They're in the paddock here. They can me elusive and shy.

Johny, if you can put that coat on,

cos normally I go in with my colleagues.

Hopefully they'll come over.

A cunning disguise! Brilliant.

Right, let's go for it! Bring it on.

OK, Helen. The crew are over there. Can you see us, guys?

Right, OK.

Why are these guys so shy?

Um, to be honest, it's probably because a natural instinct.

Any animal should be aware of humans.

And what kind of predators would they have in the wild?

Yeah, any sort of cats, snakes. Stuff like that.

If we just go over here...

And just get to their level, Johny.

All right, then, kids?

I can't promise they'll come over.

If I wasn't here, would they come over?

I think yes.

They do get to know us and trust us.

Hopefully the coat might work, you never know.

Um... Come on, then!

-How old are the little ones?

-They're about three weeks.

Come on, then!

-What have we got in the bucket?

-There are the babies.

-Aw, they're tiny!

-Come on, then.

-They're coming over.

-If we're quiet, I think they'll walk past.

So the little ones are going past here now.

They do seem really shy.

I'm sorry to say they're not going to come over today.

So why don't we leave them the bucket and food.

It's been great to see the babies, anyway.

-At least I got to see them before Rani did!

-Exactly.

When Ujung the moloch gibbon was diagnosed with diabetes

the biggest problem the keepers faced

was how to inject insulin every day.

Jane, the park's vet, was keeping a close eye on his health.

Obviously, we couldn't inject Ujung right at the start when he needed it.

He had to become used to having an injection.

There were a couple of months where he was not receiving the injection

so he lost a lot of weight and condition.

We were quite concerned about him.

Gibbons are rather shy so catching or shooting him with a blow dart

every day would be very stressful.

They needed to find a way to get Ujung to co-operate.

Jo Marden helped work out a plan.

I tried to get him used to being around keepers.

We wanted Ujung to eventually present his arm to us

where we'd be able to inject him.

We went through a few methods of trying to get him to do that.

Eventually we found one method that worked

and we've gone from there, really.

For several months the keepers worked hard to win Ujung's trust.

First they had to train him to come up close

using a food treat as a reward.

Then they got him to put his hand through a hole.

Good boy!

And gradually, little by little,

they trained him to put not just his hand

but his whole arm through the hole and right into a tube.

We'd been training Ujung to present his arm.

He puts his arm down a tube, a target which he has to hold on to.

And that's when we inject him.

Arm. Hold.

The tube has a slot cut out at the top.

Good boy!

Good boy.

When Ujung has his arm down the tube...

Come on, then. Arm!

Hold.

-..Jo can give that vital injection.

-Good boy!

When we train him, we don't use too sugary foods.

At the moment we're using pears, something he's used to.

When he's rewarded, he's rewarded with more things he likes.

The primate section has done a fantastic job.

I'm getting the insulin into Ujung's arm.

I can diagnose but I can't inject every day.

Really, that was down to them

and I'm very pleased and they've done a great job.

From being worried about what we were going to do

about injecting him to now,

he couldn't be any better with training

and adapting to the way we wanted him to be.

So yeah, it's really looking good.

So, you see, patience pays off!

As soon as he had three or four months of injections,

you could notice the change. You could see that he felt better.

He's putting his weight back on gradually which is good.

His behaviour is picking up.

We are able to get urine samples and measure the glucose,

which shows how controlled his diabetes is.

They are steadily getting better.

Although Ujung is only nine years old, he's got a lot longer to live.

Hopefully we've diagnosed it quite early

so we can do something about that quite quickly

and injecting him daily will prolong the time he's got.

Hopefully he can continue being a successful breeding male.

As Ujung recovered from the worst of his illness,

his relationship with his family changed.

Where once he was tired and uninterested,

now he plays with his kids.

He and his partner can often be seen grooming,

and the keepers suspect she might even be pregnant,

which is pretty good news for an endangered species.

If you're a Roar gamer, you'll know what to do with this.

That's today's cheat code.

If you're not a Roar gamer, why not?

It's easy to find on the CBBC website

and it's great fun, so no excuses!

Now, the majority of carnivores only eat meat,

but there is one cat species

that likes to eat a little bit of fruit and grass.

So, Ben, tell me, is Melindi the serval trying to get a good balance

of vitamins and nutrients by eating fruit as well?

Well, in the wild she would, but we've never tried it here,

so this will be the first time.

I actually thought this was a crazy idea,

so in the wild she'd actually eat fruit?

I thought these were great hunters and that's what they do,

go and catch their animals, meat and maybe a bit of fish.

Well, I'm sure if times are hard,

you know, meat's a bit scarce and they come across some fruit,

I'm sure they'll give it a good old nibble, just to see them through.

OK, then, so you've got a little fruit kebab thing going on here

on a string, and some veg as well.

There's carrot there, banana, apple and a bit of peach.

But Melindi's disappeared at the moment.

Tell me, where is Melindi from, in the wild?

-She's from Africa.

-Africa?

So which kind of area is she living in that she would find fruit?

They mainly come from the grass regions, the savannah areas.

But in Africa, there's lots of plantations that grow fruit

and things like that, so she'll come across fruit fairly easily.

She seems to be going for this. I don't know whether it's because

she just likes to play. She is really playful.

Yeah, she's hand raised, so obviously she's very playful.

Let's just see - is she interested in taking a little sniff?

Sniff of carrot, banana? Not too interested!

-Doesn't seem that way.

-But you said this is the first time.

Yeah, it's one of those things.

To start with, I think she just thinks it's a toy.

She doesn't think it's food.

Obviously it's the first time she's come across it,

so it's one of these things that we'll have to keep trying

until one day she might have a nibble.

Ooh-hoo! She's got the whole kebab!

-She was good there, Ben, wasn't she?

-Very good.

-Great bit of paw action!

-Yeah. Very agile.

In the wild, what kind of food would she hunt? What prey?

Birds, rodents, reptiles, insects - slugs and things like that.

They eat pretty much anything.

-Slugs?

-Yeah, anything they can find, they'll eat.

She seems to enjoy playing with her fruit kebab,

but at the moment she's not too interested in eating it.

Shall we leave it here and maybe she can have a little nibble later?

Yeah, it might attract slugs and things like that for her to eat!

-Well, if it attracts slugs, she can eat them!

-Exactly!

All right, thanks very much, Ben.

Over at the gorilla house, something sad has happened.

Kijo, the big male silverback, has died unexpectedly.

He was leader, father and grandfather to a large family

and just 34 years old.

In captivity, gorillas often live well into their 40s,

so it was a big shock for all the keepers,

amongst them head of section Lorna Walness.

Unfortunately, we've had some bad news.

We lost Kijo who was the silverback in this group.

He died quite suddenly of a heart attack.

It's left us quite devastated.

Kijo was much loved by all his keepers, particularly Laura Bentley.

Us keepers say that you shouldn't really have favourites,

but it is hard not to and, um, yeah, Kijo had a big place in my heart.

He was definitely one of my favourites,

if definitely my favourite gorilla.

He was a good silverback, he looked after his group.

He was very well respected in the group. He had lots of offspring,

he was one of our most important silverbacks,

as far as the collection today. He had a big part in playing in that.

And there's a surprising twist to this story.

It's sad that Kijo's gone, but he has left something hopeful behind.

We have got one bit of good news, which is nice for this group.

Dihi, one of Kijo's females, is pregnant.

So that's really good and it will also be Kijo's last,

so all in all, it'll be a very special gorilla,

just like their dad.

It is a terrible thing that's happened.

Obviously, we're all still really sad about losing Kijo.

But life does go on.

The group that he's left behind still needs to move on, and they will.

Another silverback eventually will come in and, um, you know,

they'll move on like the rest of us.

But, um, hopefully Dihi's baby will be a nice reminder of Kijo

and, um, you know, things will be all right.

We'll be keeping our fingers crossed for Dihi,

and when that baby arrives,

we'll be there to show you what happens to Kijo's last child.

The keepers at the park do everything in their power

to make sure the animals they look after have whatever they need

to keep them happy and healthy. But, imagine how much easier their jobs

would be if they could just ask the animals what they want.

Well, one keeper has been working on just that.

Hi, I'm Nick and I can talk to the rhinos.

In the past, we've seen that Nick will stop at nothing

to learn more about his black rhinos.

He's even tried out their mud wallow. But do they really talk?

Communication is really important to rhinos. They do it in various ways,

through squeaks, squeals, roars and snorts.

So they make different sounds,

but can we tell what those noises really mean?

One of the commonest noises you'll hear,

certainly when you've got mums and calves together,

is like a little squeal sound. Sort of a Mmmh, mmhm.

RHINOS SQUEAL

It's generally there for the calf to tell the mum everything's OK, really.

And what other noise do they make?

HE BURPS

Charming!

Sometimes when rhinos are content,

they may make a gurgling, burping noise.

BOTH BURP

What about when they're being aggressive?

While they're fighting, it'd be a sort of roaring sort of sound.

A rrr-rrrargh sort of noise. Almost like a lion.

IT ROARS

A bit more guttural and burbly than that, but I can't really do that.

That aggressive roar...

Raaaaarrr!

..is hardly ever heard here in the park, luckily for everyone's ears.

The rhino's scream is incredibly loud, really.

They could hear it for over a mile away.

I mean, we can hear it from across the park.

So rhinos do make sounds

that must mean something to other rhinos. But...

-SQUEAK!

-..what will they think if it's Nick who's doing the talking?

Mmmh! Mmmh.

Mmmh.

Mmmh.

She doesn't seem too talkative today.

Clearly, that's not going to work.

But then rhinos have another way to communicate.

They leave each other messages in the form of dung.

Scent-marking round their territories.

They have several of these around their ranges,

so they just do their business

and then they know who's in their area at any one point.

So, rhinos aren't the chattiest animal around,

and we can hardly tell what they're saying, anyway.

But, on the other hand, they seem to understand each other.

He's tough!

It's almost the end of the show, but we've found just enough time

to come and have a tug-o-war with a Siberian lynx, Bill

and his keeper Rich Langston. Rich, how you doing?

I'm fine.

Look at you just chilling out! Rich, we've heard of soap on a rope,

but meat on a rope? Is this how you normally feed Bill?

We've done it quite a lot. It means he has to work for it

and use his strength and paws and teeth and it's just more natural,

rather than give it to him.

It's quite tight, cos you can tell he's got strength behind him.

He's very strong. Is this the kind of food

that you'd feed him out in the wild? He's loving this!

Yeah, give him anything and he'll like it, but this is actually

a bit of venison, which would make a big part of their diet in the wild.

I've got to admit we're absolutely struggling here and Bill is just

lying in the sunshine and going,

"This is a doddle! I'm just chewing..."

He's not even spending any energy.

This is half of what he could do.

But talk about these guys hunting out in the wild.

Do they have any special adaptations to help them?

Oh!

He heard me!

Basically, the lynx and their hunting, their main one

is all about the stealth and the power.

Hide, hide, and at last minute, go for their prey,

and they use the great strength you're feeling now to overpower it.

As well as being strong, are they really fast as well?

They are for their size, but it is the strength.

They have to be fast to catch deer

or anything they'd be aiming to kill,

but it's the strength that's the impressive bit.

Once they've caught it, generally nothing gets out that grip.

I'm impressed by his nails. I keep seeing those claws and thinking,

"I just want to let go of the rope!"

Johny, I think we should let go and say goodbye to you guys for now,

and why don't you check out what's on the next episode of Roar?

Next time on Roar:

The baby tapir is out and about

and we're going to find out how he's getting on.

There's trouble with the cheetahs...

..as the boys work out who's boss.

And the Roar Ranger is facing his worst nightmare

when he has to tackle one of the biggest pooers in the park.

Ohh!

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