Episode 7 Roar

Wo-ho! That has to be the coolest haircut in the parks,

and the little monkey's very rare too.

In fact, he's the only one of his kind.

-Hello and welcome to Roar. I'm Johny.

-And I'm Rani.

-What are you doing?

-Did you know that a giraffe's tongue

can grow to an impressive 53cm. That's about this long,

-so it can wash behind its ears with its tongue.

-Well, a human tongue

can only grow to a very unimpressive 10cm,

so there's no way that is getting behind those.

I'll have to stick to soap and water, then.

Why don't you check out what's coming up on today's Roar?

We've got poo flying everywhere!

There's poo on the camera!

There is poo on the camera!

What chance do little doggy chews have

against these strong jaws?

And some immense tigers face the acid test. Will the scent

of citrus fruit drive them wild?

Right, check out these crazy-looking guys.

They may look like the Tweenies but they're grizzled leaf monkeys

and they're in danger of dying out.

There used to be loads of them in the rainforests of Java

but their natural forest home has been almost completely destroyed.

They're much safer here at Port Lympne and Howletts,

which is just nuts, and Liam looks after all of them.

Each one of these monkey nuts

represents one of our grizzled leaf monkeys at park.

There's 15 of them, so there's not many of them in captivity at all.

Being the only grizzled leaf monkeys outside Java

makes them a very exclusive gang.

With less than 3,000 in the wild, it's a serious conservation value

that we have them here.

With their species so close to becoming extinct,

the keepers are maxing their effort to safe them, and it's paying off.

We've had some fantastic news.

Mojang, our female grizzled leaf monkey, has given birth

so we can add another peanut to our list

and another animal to our collection.

And since it's feeding time now, we might just get to see the baby.

Come on, then, sweetness.

There are six grizzled leaf monkeys in this family group

and Mojang is the mum.

We don't want to worry her,

so our crew are staying outside the enclosure

which will make it even harder to spot the tiny baby.

They are a very nervous species.

Planes flying over can make them have a negative response

and display some weird behaviours, a lot of alarm-calling,

but again, in general, they are quite a shy species.

But it's vital that Liam sees the baby often

to make sure it's all right, so we'll come back when he finds out

where Mojang is hiding the little one.

Our Roar Ranger today is nine-year-old Oscar from Kent.

He's got a particular reason

for wanting to have a go

at being an animal keeper.

I'd like to be a Roar Ranger

because I want to work in a zoo when I'm older.

He's got some experience of dealing with wild animals -

his pet dog, Scooby.

Oscar certainly doesn't lack energy,

so let's find out what use he'll be putting it to

as today's Roar Ranger.

"Oscar, today you're a baboon keeper. Let's go ape!"

HE IMITATES AN APE

Guinea baboons are the smallest of the five kinds of baboon

that still survive in the wild.

They come from remote parts of western Africa,

but their forest homes are still being destroyed,

so the future doesn't look good.

Keeper Matt helps to look after 162 cheeky monkeys at the park,

so showing the ropes to one more should be a breeze for him.

-Hello.

-Hello, are you Oscar?

-Yes.

-I'm Matt.

-Had a good day so far?

-Yes.

-Well, I'm going to spoilt that for you.

Oh, dear. Matt's lined up a real treat -

cleaning up after three male Guinea baboons.

Nice!

There we go, Oscar. Inside the baboon house.

-Have a good sniff.

-Eurgh!

-What do you reckon?

-It stinks!

-Yeah.

A bit like your mum not cleaning your bedroom out

-cos I've heard that your bedroom's a bit like that.

-Yeah.

-Would you do that on the floor in your bedroom?

-No!

Well, let's hope not! These baboons are even fiercer than Oscar's mum,

so Matt wants their bedroom to be immaculate.

First thing I want you to do, Oscar, is brush all that

off the shelf onto the floor.

Hold up, let's take another look at that, shall we?

Eurgh! That's gross!

There's poo on the camera!

There is poo on the camera, yeah!

OSCAR LAUGHS

The baboons would probably laugh too if they could.

But it won't be a laughing matter

if Oscar doesn't make a clean sweep of their bedroom.

Fully-grown male Guinea baboons have huge, sharp canine teeth

which are just as big as a lion's.

Keep scrubbing, Oscar!

I stinks so badly. I don't know what it smells like.

It just smells really bad. You wouldn't like to be doing this.

The floor has to be literally clean enough to eat off -

in the wild, Guinea baboons get a lot of their food off the ground.

The keepers here try to keep things natural,

so their meals get scattered around,

then everything has to be cleared up together.

Come on, then, joint effort. You sweep, I'll shovel.

Yeah, and I'm going to slip on a bit of rotten food!

Did you get that?

We did! Let's see that moment again.

What rotten luck.

I slipped on a bit of rotten food. Nothing to laugh about.

Well, it is QUITE funny. We'll come back later

to see what Matt gives Oscar to do next.

Animal chew toys are meant to be pretty much indestructible

and I'd have a hard time making a dent in that,

but Head of Carnivores Jim Vassie knows something, or someone,

that could definitely test this to its limits.

-Tell me it's not in here with us.

-No, no,

but that's who were going to test it on - the African hunting dogs.

These are truly terrifying creatures.

They start eating their prey while it's still alive,

so you would not want to feel their razor-sharp teeth chomping into you.

So, Jim, we've got three chew toys here. Is that one for each dog?

Yeah, just so there's no fighting over one particular ball,

they've got one each. I've put some little titbits in them

-to encourage them to chew on them.

-Reckon that'll do?

-Yeah, that looks pretty good, yeah.

-OK, brilliant.

The dogs are there. We're in here.

I don't want to be here when they're here.

-Can we get out of here?

-Yeah, let's go for it.

-Let's leave them to it.

Straight away, yeah.

-See? They were going to try and run off with it.

-Yeah.

Get this. Kilo for kilo,

these guys bite with more force than any other meat-eater.

Will they often fight over the food

or will they work out that they've got one each?

They'll all work together to try and move it

-from where we've tied it.

-They've taken it apart already!

-And so, out in the wild, would they hunt in a pack?

-Very much so.

The more eyes and ears they've got on their prey,

the quicker they can catch it and bring it down.

Look how quickly... Why is their jaw so strong?

They're bringing big animals down so they need to have powerful jaws

to latch onto the skin or fur to bring the animal down.

Are they successful hunters?

Probably one of the best hunters in Africa.

A lion might go out and hunt, but only get prey every five attempts,

-whereas these might get three every five.

-How often are they fed here?

They're fed every other day, and what we're doing is enrichment for them.

Because they don't kill here,

this is a way of sharpening the muscle in their necks,

the jaw, and they're interacting as they should do.

They seem to be yelping. Are they in distress there?

No, one's telling the other one,

"I've got this bit, you get your own."

They work as a team when hunting,

and those squeaking noises is how they communicate with each other.

-Do they bark at all?

-It's not a bark as such.

Obviously, if they bark in the wild,

they give their place away when they're chasing their prey,

so they squeak, which mimics birds and things like that.

So the prey they're chasing doesn't know it's a dog that's chasing them.

I've got to say, our toys were not indestructible at all,

as proven by these African hunting dogs. That is one dog

whose bite is definitely worse than its bark.

-Where do frogs keep their money?

-I don't know.

In a river bank.

-What's the strongest fish in the sea?

-I don't know.

A muscle!

-What do penguins have for lunch?

-I don't know.

An iceberg-er.

LAUGHTER

Earlier on, we heard that a very rare baby grizzled leaf monkey

had been born in the parks,

but its mum Mojang was keeping it hidden,

and it's taken keeper Liam some time to find them.

I see Mum's hung back a little bit

and she's just up at the top on the platform there,

one of her favourite roosting sites,

and you can see, just tucked up nice and tight - she's very protective -

is her two-week-old baby.

Finally, the 16th grizzled leaf monkey outside of Java

shows himself. Cool hairstyle. It's a bit like Liam's.

There's new sights, new sounds for him every day.

As we're coming into the summer time,

there's new smells for him. Lots of insects come into his enclosure.

The 16 animals we have here at the park are extremely important,

so I suppose you could say they are

the last hope for grizzled leaf monkeys outside of Java.

We've been lucky today, but it can be tricky

for the keepers to keep an eye on the baby.

As a good mum, she should be protecting her offspring,

so she doesn't spend a lot of time around the keepers.

It can be difficult to observe the animal suckling

and feeding, which we do need to see,

but hopefully, in time, she'll start to get used to the keepers

coming into her enclosure and come down for food.

But the baby's safety is so important

that Liam needs to know it's OK when he isn't there to watch,

so he's going to rig up one of our cameras

-and leave it recording overnight.

-I think they sit towards the back

of the enclosure. Hopefully, if I'm right -

not that we know what they do of an evening, hence the camera -

Mojang will be sitting towards the back of the enclosure.

This should give us some great shots,

but Liam's also counting on it to put his mind at rest.

I'm hoping to see some interaction from the other animals

and see what they do, but more than anything,

seeing the baby up close and seeing how the mum interacts with it,

and just seeing if it's feeding. This has never been done before

so it's a really interesting piece of footage

that hopefully we'll get

and go towards our archive of their behaviours.

Liam won't chill out until he's seen the tape.

The night can be a dangerous time for young animals.

Now, when it comes to honky poo,

there's one creature that beats everything else here,

and that's the ocelot,

also known as the painted leopard.

Like all cats, they're quite good at cleaning themselves up,

but they leave horrible heaps

all the way from Texas down into northern South America,

as Mark Hawkes knows only too well.

Have a look. What is that, Mark?

Well, that's the remains of last week's dinner.

I have to say, we all know the ocelot's pee smells,

but this actually smells even worse. It's really pungent, isn't it?

I'm ready to help, but I'm letting you do all the gruesome stuff.

Is there a reason why ocelots smell so much?

A lot of the ocelot's natural habitat covers coastal wetlands,

so one thought is that it's possibly because cats follow a scent

to find other cats, if they're going to mate and, if it's always wet,

it'll be hard to find the scent unless it's strong.

We've got some wood shavings and straw,

so once I've got this dirty stuff out the way,

you can put in a layer of shavings in case he does wee - it soaks it up.

-Do ocelots wee in the same place?

-Yeah, many of the cats seem to.

They go round scent-marking

and then the other cats know that that's their home, if you like.

Now, he is prowling round in here. Is that fine, us being in here?

He's really placid. Obviously, you don't want to go over

and try and stroke him. He does change a bit around feed time.

He gets a bit more aggressive, but that's natural. He wants his dinner.

But while we're in here,

he's pretty happy just chilling out out of the way.

And also, with us cleaning out his little toilet-style box,

does he appreciate this? Does he like to have it cleaned?

In the wild, it's not like someone's going to come in and clean it up

-so what would happen there?

-Well, we don't do it

so often that it annoys him or anything.

-So that isn't just on one day, then, that mess?

-Thankfully not,

otherwise I'd have a much busier job than I do.

No, that's accumulated. We generally clean the enclosures twice a week.

It's only really when it's wet and it's really bad that we clean them.

If not, we tend to just leave him. It's his home. We don't want to

make him have to make it snug again too often.

But I'm sure, some of the states that he leaves it in,

-he's probably quite appreciative of us cleaning it.

-He's like,

"Yes, Mark, make sure you do the corners."

We're putting this in. It's not that soft. Is it comfy enough

-for the ocelots?

-Oh, certainly comfy enough.

-We've done a great job,

but you know what would make it perfect? A little air freshener.

Having cleaned out the Guinea baboons' house earlier on,

Oscar's reward is to hand-feed them

under the watchful eye of experienced keeper Matt.

I forgot his name!

Remember, if you're visiting the park,

do not feed the animals. They get a balanced diet from the keepers.

But what DO they eat? The boys like nuts.

There's three boys in here. We've got Linkos who's sat over there,

we've got Lusaka who's in front of you there,

and we've got Jonas up there.

Male baboons can be aggressive

and don't like being kept waiting for their food. Watch out, Oscar.

-It's literally just like...

-Ohh!

-There you go.

That's why you shouldn't go near them

without a keeper. They're grumpy.

He looks at me like this - really suspiciously

like, are you going to do it again?

Amongst troops of baboons, the law of the jungle is all that counts

and, if the top-ranking guy doesn't get his grub first,

everyone better watch out.

Whoa, that wasn't me! It was him!

Don't blame me for something that I didn't do.

They're getting their own back

cos you didn't clean their bedroom properly.

So, at the end of our Roar Ranger's day, what does Oscar think?

I have a healthy respect for baboons.

I don't want to get in there and fight with them. Do you?

I possibly think there's a future in zoo-keeping for Oscar at the park,

-but maybe not with baboons.

-Whoa, that wasn't me! It was him!

How's your own wildlife park doing?

The Roar online game is full of new attractions

-like the Ice World enclosure.

-Punch in today's code,

blizzard7, and see what cool freebies we're giving away.

Sit back and enjoy.

Now, everyone knows that pet cats love the smell of catnip,

so do giant wild ones get excited by new scents too?

Tug and Ingrid, and cubs Sinda and Bira, who were born here last year,

are Siberian tigers, which are the biggest of the lot.

Keeper Chris Hales thinks the zest, or grated rind,

of lemons, oranges and limes will make them purr with pleasure,

so we've come down to their enclosure to give it a try.

Chris, I'm not convinced tigers are going to like citrus fruit

but do you want me to take that in there and get started?

I've really done the hard work for you.

I've already put some orange zest down on this log,

and next to it we've got some lemon on the log there,

and over on the back there, on the rocks, we've got some lime.

It's a little bit of a competition. Once we let the cats out,

we'll see which ones they like best.

They saw me putting it in there. Yeah, here they come right now.

-So this is Ingrid first.

-OK, is she the boss?

Well, she's the mum. I wouldn't exactly call her the boss.

Ah, there we go. So Ingrid's on the lime there at the back.

And the two cubs, they'll kind of go wherever Mum goes.

So we've got Tugar on the left. That's the dad. Then Mum next to him,

and then we've got Sinda and Bira, the two youngsters.

Do tigers in the wild usually stick together?

Actually, no. This is an unusual situation.

Normally, you wouldn't find dads with the family,

but because Tugar was hand-reared and he's such a big softie,

we knew it wouldn't be an issue keeping him with them,

-and he's proved us right.

-So they're sniffing...

That's the lime over there, isn't it? The lime's taken their fancy.

Yeah, you can see Tug's having a good old sniff.

One of the youngsters has come up.

-What do you make of that, then?

-That's amazing.

You're supposed to be at the log.

So, out in the wild, obviously, they love meat and things like that,

-but do you think they'd eat fruit?

-No, they wouldn't eat fruit,

but when we've done things similar to this in the past...

Occasionally we'll put in half an orange and rub it on the logs,

and leave the orange in there,

and they do have a bit of a chew on it. Anybody who's got cats at home,

occasionally you'll see them eating things like grass as well,

so they do try different things out, but meat is their main thing.

-This is purely for smell.

-Look at this!

I didn't realise how tall they were.

-How tall do they grow? That's taller than me.

-Just to give you an idea,

-she's a year old at the moment.

-Oh, my gosh!

A year old and taller than me. I'm six foot tall.

Yeah, she's a big girl, isn't she, already?

They get huge. Tug here, he weighs round about 33 stone at the moment,

and he's not a particularly big Siberian tiger.

Tug, are you going to show us how tall you are?

Tug, what's this? Come on, boy, show us. Go on, what's this?

-Oh, my gosh!

-There you go, he's not even stretching.

And you say he's not even a particularly big tiger?

No, not really. He's kind of average size for a Siberian tiger,

so, yeah, massive cats.

Obviously, they are the largest out of all the cats.

Chris, I'm not sure they like that scent.

They're going in to wash it off.

Is there a particular scent they do like?

Believe it or not, one of their favourites is perfume.

Tigers like perfume? You learn something every day.

Thank you so much for bringing us down here, Chris.

Earlier on, we saw Liam rigging up a camera so that he could check

that the new baby grizzled leaf monkey is safe overnight.

These awesome guys with their buff haircuts

are dying out fast in the wild

and the colony of 16 here

are the only grizzled leaf monkeys in captivity anywhere in the world,

apart from their homeland, Java.

So this is one very important baby.

He proves that they can be bred in captivity,

and that may be the only way

the grizzlies can survive in the long run.

Two other keepers, Adam and Joe, are also keen to watch the recording.

Really, we're hoping to see the youngster moving around.

Really, we want to see that it's strong,

active, bright and alert,

and seeing if they interact with each other

throughout the night time. It's obviously looking bright and alert.

Looks pretty healthy, doesn't it?

The good news is that the baby looks very well indeed

and he's just as cheeky as his dad.

Yeah, there's our little budding camera-man.

That's the adult male.

Ah, thanks! I think we're going to see

a lot of wall and no monkeys tonight.

Or are we?

He's moved the camera back in, into shot.

This is interesting. This is the sort of thing that we wanted to see -

aunting behaviour where the other females look after him.

It's quite obvious there that Mojang, it's mum,

has left it to its own devices with the other female,

and it's having a whale of a time with her.

Aunting is where the mum lets other monkeys look after her baby.

It gives younger females the chance to find out what it's like

while lucky old mum gets a rest.

-The video's proving very useful.

-That's quite interesting.

The mum looks like she's just left it to its own devices for a while.

It seems quite happy round the rest of the group.

It's the first I've seen her off mum.

But as soon as the lights go off, the baby comes straight back to mum.

I can't believe how active it is, just constantly going.

She must be really giving Mum a hard time. I certainly wouldn't like

keeping her in check.

So the camera's done its job.

The keepers now know the baby's well looked after overnight,

and they're learning a lot of other stuff too.

Any information we can get, for this species in particular,

is really interesting, and more so when they've got an infant,

especially something as rare as this. Just to see that it's strong

and that Mum's looking after it properly, really,

and it's a bonus just seeing the rest of the group interacting with it.

So excellent, big success.

Now, if you think that baby monkey was cute, check this one out.

Keymon's a Diana monkey that Simon Jeffrey hand-reared last year

and he was a riot.

That's nearly a year ago now, so we want to see how he's getting on.

Can we see Keymon today? They all look the same if he's got big!

-Keymon's over here.

-Oh, he's still little, isn't he?

-Ohh!

-Keymon!

So he's back in there with everyone, seems really happy,

-so it is a happy ending?

-A very happy ending, exactly what we want.

He's back in, he's part of the group and he's a proper little monkey.

High five that! We like that. We do like that. It's good news.

Simon, what does the future hold for him? Is he going to start

-his own family or stick in with this family?

-He's just over a year old,

so he's got a long way yet until he's mature enough to start breeding,

-but we want to see him having his own family.

-That sounds fantastic.

Now, talking about new families, I heard a rumour,

not that I ever listen to rumours,

-but Angie, Keymon's mum, is preggers again. Is that right?

-She could be.

It may be very early on in the pregnancy.

-If there is a new baby, tell me first.

-No, tell me first.

-No, tell me!

-Unfortunately, we're out of time on today's show,

but stick around to see what's happening on the next Roar.

Five a day for the ellies

means a jumbo-sized mountain of fruit and veg,

but they have to find it.

While the colobus monkeys prefer a more personal style of service.

And giant giraffes look even bigger

when they're staring you in the face.

Make sure you're watching.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

Email [email protected]