Episode 30 Roar

Today on Roar, there's been a very rare sighting out on the safari -

a newborn baby antelope and it's pure white.

But could its colour be the death of it?

ROARING

MEOW

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

-I'm Rani

and over here is a beautiful European bison.

As you can see, he's having a bit of a munch at the moment

but in the wild, drinking water is just as important.

That's right. And they obtain water in the winter months by eating snow

or smashing ice on puddles.

And they conserve energy in the winter by resting for 60% of the day.

60% of the day resting? That's what I'm talking about, Rani.

Oi, you, budding bison. We've got a show to do.

-Get yourself up. Come on!

-Oh!

Get out of there.

Coming up, a fishing cat gets crabby

but who's got the sharpest claws?

What animal could our Roar Ranger possibly be cleaning up after?

And I try to make friends with the silverbacks...

without much success.

Was that telling us off or was that telling BuBu off?

-I think that's telling you guys off.

-Ah, OK.

But first, head keeper Bob is racing out to the safari area

because one of the keepers has spotted a newborn red lechwe calf

and amazingly, it's white instead of red.

The infant is only a day old and very vulnerable.

Bob wants to track it down urgently,

as its unusual colour could mean it's in danger.

It's the first one that I've known since I've been here, in 17 years.

We've never had a white deer or a white antelope here born.

So it's a novelty. You can see the downside of being a white antelope.

Red lechwe roam the swamplands of southern Africa,

where they travel in herds of thousands

to protect them from predators such as lions and hyenas.

This baby's unusual colouring means it looks very different

from the rest of the herd, so its mother could easily reject it.

It's important for Bob to check it's OK

but this is proving easier said than done.

Well, it can be quite hard seeing it.

Red lechwe are designed to hide up in this coloured grass.

They're more or less the same colour. They're quite small.

I can see some red lechwe down there, so we'll have a look.

Mothers hide their babies in long grass,

so is the white one there?

No, unfortunately. We've got several youngsters there

but not the one we're looking for, so we'll have another look.

This is bad news. The baby is nowhere to be seen.

But is this the park's entire herd?

Well, in the main group at the moment we're down as 30 animals

but this is the breeding season,

so I suspect we've probably got about 35 out here now.

In that group there, I've counted them and there's 29,

so the bulk of them are there.

We'll have a drive round and see if we can find it.

As this isn't the whole herd, there's still hope

but Bob has over 100 acres of wilderness still to search

and every second counts.

At just one day old, this baby is defenceless

and could be in great danger.

Will Bob manage to find it before it's too late?

The gorillas on the park sometimes get honey treats,

which they have to use sticks to reach for.

Today they're getting a new invention to test their intelligence

but will they know what to do with it?

Now, few things excite me quite as much as a bit of genius inventing

and head keeper aka Mad Professor Phil has come up with something new for his gorillas.

-How are you, Phil?

-I'm all right, Johny.

-What's this contraption?

-Well, it's a variation on our honey pots,

what we call honey pots.

The gorillas have to find a stick and there's one through the hole

and poke it through to get a treat from one of these jars.

So it looks like there's some tasty treats here.

-Well, jam in the bottom one there.

-Right, OK.

-We've got some banana, a bit of chocolate spread...

-Mm!

..some peanut butter and here, if you want to put some in,

you can help out with that, a bit of lemon curd.

Why make them work so hard for their food?

You've got the pots here and they've got to get the sticks.

-Why not put the pots straight in?

-That makes life too easy.

We want to make them work a bit, use their brain.

Ideally, they should be going looking for a stick to poke in here

but because it's something new, we've given them a clue.

You can see Djumbah is making his way over here now.

What was that? He's just hit the fence.

Was that telling us off or was that telling BuBu off?

-I think it's telling you guys off.

-Right, OK.

-Because you're not normally here, so...

-Right, OK.

Djumbah's coming over. He's not sure about us, is he?

-I think it's more the camera, actually.

-Right.

He's trying to pluck up a bit of courage to come and look.

Either that or he's coming over to display at the camera.

Oh, look, there we go.

Has a bit of a smell of it first.

He did pull one of the sticks out but there was nothing on the end.

So is it trial and error? Do you think he'll be disarmed by that

or do you think he'll try again?

He'll try again once he gets to realise...

He can't see most of these at the moment, properly.

He's trying to cheat. He's going to try and break the whole thing off.

So he's coming around this side!

That's very clever.

Yeah, they're smart. If there's a way of getting a lot more,

they'll try and do that.

And I guess in a way, this is why you do experiments like this...

-CRACKING NOISE

-Whoa! Look at that.

There you go. He's broken it.

OK, very clever. He's broken our amazing device.

-Phil, what are we going to do?

-We'll go to plan B and make it a bit stronger.

Make it out of stainless steel next time.

He's going to go round the edge again.

Poke your stick in there.

We're doing a bit of cheating now.

-That's it.

-Look at that.

-There's a hole there, look.

-That's amazing.

You need a smaller stick.

Yeah, it's not quite working for him, is it?

Oh!

'As Djumbah runs away, BuBu sneaks in

'but he is armed with a twig small enough for the job.

'As a member of the great ape family,

'gorillas are one of the most intelligent animals, as BuBu is proving here.'

-This is BuBu.

-He's found a twig.

That looks all right. He's going for a banana one.

Look at that. That is really impressive.

JOHNY LAUGHS

That's amazing that he knows to poke the stick in to get the chocolate.

It's such a small hole, as well. It's amazing to get so close to them

-and to see how intelligent they are.

-Yeah.

-So thanks for that.

-No worries.

Today's Roar Ranger is 12-year-old Katey from Edinburgh.

Rrrr!

I'm so glad to be a Roar Ranger because I love animals,

so it's amazing.

So is this Roar Ranger up for any job?

No matter what it is, if it's poo or anything, I'll just go for it.

Eugh!

I think I'm quite brave.

With hundreds of animals in the park,

which one will she be looking after today?

"Katey, today you're in the carnivore section as a dhole keeper."

I love the dholes because I like their little face. It's cute.

It reminds me of foxes but I think they're prettier than foxes.

Brilliant. Love it. I'm going to go and see what I can do.

Dholes are Asiatic hunting dogs

which can be found all the way across Asia.

Their rusty red coat means they're often thought to resemble foxes

but they're in fact true dogs.

They live in packs of anything from five to 20

and at the park, there are 16, thanks to a recent litter of four pups.

Our Roar Ranger will be looking after the pack,

along with carnivore keeper Ben.

-Hi.

-Hiya. You're my Roar Ranger, are you?

-Yep.

-I'm Ben. I'm deputy head of cats.

-I'm Katey.

This is where you'll be working today, in with the dhole.

I'll show you what to do.

-Are the dholes out of the enclosure?

-No, today you're going in with them.

What did Ben just say?

Today you're going in with them.

-How do you feel about that?

-Quite nervous.

Right, come this way.

Going in with these wild dogs is only possible because Katey is with Ben,

who has worked with these animals for years.

Dholes are very shy dogs, who prefer to keep well away from humans,

so Katey is perfectly safe.

It's a bit scary because I can see one.

There's loads of them over there. You can see a couple of pups, too.

-Yeah.

-All the youngsters. Can you see them all?

There's two pups... No, four pups.

Then there's the two adults on the floor and loads in the distance.

Right, this is your first job.

All the rain water and the dogs running through it made it very mucky

and this has to be spotless, so you have to brush all the water out.

OK.

The dogs paddle and bathe in the pool

and even though they have separate water bowls, they prefer drinking this water.

So the team need to keep it as clean as possible.

-It's a lot of water, isn't it?

-Yes.

-How long do you think this is going to take you?

-A while.

I'm going to go and have a coffee and I'll come back later.

No, not really! Ben's keeping a watchful eye on our Roar Ranger.

So, too, are 16 pairs of dhole eyes, watching the cleaning operation.

It's a lot of hard work.

There's lots of water to get out.

It is quite a tough job.

It looks easy but there's a lot of water in here

and it does take a while to brush out.

She's doing very well.

I could get used to this. All I need is a deckchair and a drink.

Our Roar Ranger's doing a great job but it's time for the big guns.

-Do you want me to take over for a bit?

-Yes, please.

And that's how it's really done.

It just needs a finish off with a final scrub.

-Do you want to give that a scrub and away we go.

-Yeah.

The job's hard. I don't know if I'm being very effective.

I'll go and turn the tap on and we'll see how it looks.

It's looking a lot cleaner than when we started.

So that's the tiring bit of the job all done

but now for the yucky bit.

But what on earth will that involve?

HYENA LAUGHS

How do you stop a dog smelling?

Put a peg on its nose. Ruff-ruff!

Ssssss!

What do cats put in their soft drinks?

Mice cubes. Ta-dah!

ELEPHANTS TRUMPET

-What do you give a sick pig?

-I don't know.

Oink-ment.

LAUGHTER

Most cats hate water but not the fishing cats.

These wild moggies are from India and southeast Asia,

where they live on the edges of marshes, rivers and streams.

Amazingly, these cats go fishing to catch their food,

often diving deep underwater.

And they will anything from fish and frogs to ducks and crabs.

So today I'm with cat keeper Mark

and we're treating the park's fishing cat Rhondu to a seafood surprise

for the first time.

-You've got a crab there.

-I have.

-Is that something Rhondu would like?

-I think so, yeah.

It gives him a challenge to try and crack into it

and they will eat things like crustaceans and crabs

and various other sorts of seafood, if you like, in the wild.

-And what have I got here?

-You have got a sardine.

A very tasty and smelly, might I add, sardine

and he doesn't have to crack into anything.

How are we going to place this down for Rhondu so he can take his pick?

Well, just to your right there we've got a bit of washing line.

Washing line? Hang on, Mark.

This is fish, he's a fishing cat. Let me point this out to you.

-Can we not just place them into water?

-That's just too easy.

-OK.

He's a bit funny sometimes and he doesn't like getting his feet wet.

Plus, hanging them up like this separately, he can see them separately

and it gives us a chance to see which one he likes the most.

So we've got some mussels set up, we've sardines and crabs.

He's not tried crab and he's not tried mussels.

Do you think he's curious enough to go for one of those first

or will he go for the lowest one, so he can go, "That's a nice bit of fish"?

I'd like to think that he might go for the crab

because it's different to what he's usually had

but he'll probably go for the fish because he knows what it is.

Well, there's only one way to find out

and that's we're getting out of here

and we'll let Rhondu out in his enclosure later on,

so make sure you join us. Come one.

Out on the safari area, keeper Bob is still frantically searching

for the newly born pure white baby antelope,

to check it hasn't been abandoned by its mother and the herd.

However, with over 100 acres to search, he's having a tough time.

They've got a very natural environment, so it can be a job to find them.

To make matters worse,

red lechwe mums usually hide their young

to keep them safe from predators.

This could make finding it even more difficult.

Bob's powerful binoculars are essential.

And then in the distance, something catches Bob's attention.

I think we've got it.

At last! The baby is alive and looks very healthy.

This is a real Roar first,

a white baby red lechwe and it seems to be fitting in a treat.

Mum's accepted it, the group's accepted it, so that's two big hurdles.

There's no reason why it shouldn't have a long and happy life here.

Seeing this baby with the herd,

you can see just how different it is from the rest of them.

It's highly unlikely you would see one in the wild.

They wouldn't last very long in the wild

because they stick out like a sore thumb.

When they're babies, they won't be able to hide up

and they'll soon get gobbled up by something.

Even though this white antelope wouldn't last long in the wild,

the park are thrilled about its arrival.

It's still very special for us. It's a novelty.

Now all it needs is name.

Well, I think the new name for the little white red lechwe

should be Snowflake

because when it starts to moult, we can call it Flaky.

Snowflake? That's a pants name.

I think it should be snowflake, mate. That's a cool name.

No, if you're after cool, Bob, it's got to be something like ice.

Ice is cool.

No. Snowflake, mate. Snowflake.

It might not be a popular choice with the team but Bob has spoken.

He's happy Snowflake is doing well

but they will be keeping a close eye on his progress

over the next few weeks.

Right, you Roar gamers, it's cheat code time.

Tap in today's cheat code, rock946, and see what you get.

And remember,

your animals will only breed when they are happy and healthy.

Happy gaming!

Down in the elephant paddock, there are two enormous babies.

The youngest, super-cute Etana, is just five months old.

And then there's Uzuri, who's been a star of Roar ever since she was born.

This lovable youngster is now over a year old

and is a firm favourite of keeper Angela's.

I've come down to have a look at Uzuri today,

just see how she's getting on.

She's just eating some browse at the moment

over there with the rest of the herd.

She's really developed her personality

and has established herself in the herd.

Whenever we let them through into the sand paddock,

she goes the opposite of the pool to her mum.

She's in with the rest of the herd, doesn't need her big sister or mum any more.

Uzuri is a little mischievous.

She mock charges us now and tries to whack us with her trunk -

really, really playful.

She's definitely going to keep us on our toes.

She's formed quite a maternal bond with Etana, as well.

They're always pushing each other around.

As they're the two smallest, they like to beat each other up a bit.

It's nice to see them playing together.

Uzuri and Etana are definitely best buddies.

Uzuri's really special to me.

She's been discovering how to be an elephant and I've learnt about her.

It's been really nice watching her grow up with the herd and interact.

It's been really special.

Now, earlier on in the show, keeper Mark Hawkes and I placed

a selection of seafood inside the fishing cat enclosure.

Have a look at this.

We placed it all very lovely on a washing line.

Mark's idea, I have to add.

-Now, Mark, Rhondu is still shut away, isn't he?

-He is, yes.

So it's time to find out what our kitty critic -

hard to say that one - thinks of his seafood selection.

-Shall we let him out?

-Yeah.

OK.

Now, here he comes.

He's not that big, actually, is he?

Well, he is about twice the size of your average domestic cat.

He used to be a little bit on the larger side.

As he's trimmed down, he's getting a bit more toned.

-Has he got good eyesight, Mark?

-Yeah, they do. All of their senses are well developed.

A great sense of smell and hearing, as well.

-He really is just sniffing the air, isn't he?

-Yeah, knows they're there

but sometimes he's just a bit sort of blase about things

and he's a bit stubborn, so he won't always put on a show for people.

You said he might go for the crab.

He's given it a little knock and now ignored it.

Yeah. I don't think he quite knows it's food yet.

So, if they go for birds, they're used to jumping,

but what about fishing?

I can't imagine Rhondu sitting there like that, reeling something in.

No, he hasn't got a rod, that's for sure,

but they've got a lot of tools that enable them to fish.

They've got partially webbed paws,

so as well as helping them swim, it almost acts like a fishing net

because it gives them more surface area.

Their sharp claws act as fishing hooks, if you like,

and they're not fully retractable like other cats'.

They're always there at the ready.

It's also been known for fishing cats to gently tap the surface of the water

to imitate insects to attract fish

and then when they come in closer, they grab hold of them.

That's really clever.

Oh, oh! We've got a bit of crab action going on now.

Well, I tell you what, Mark, we're not having much fish action.

How about we get that fish, batter it and add some chips?

-And a bit of salt and vinegar.

-Only as part of a healthy balanced diet, though.

Go on, Rhondu. Have a bite.

Sometimes on Roar we have to be patient.

The animals can be distracted with too many people around,

so we left our cameraman down with Rhondu

to see what would happen

and bingo - later on, he did go for the crab,

claws and all.

Our Roar Ranger Katey is helping keeper Ben look after the dholes.

After cleaning out the pond, there's yet another yucky task to do.

Our next job is to go round and pick up all the old bones.

-Nice.

-Yeah. It's lovely.

Right, shall we take a wander?

-What kind of food do they eat?

-They mainly eat meat.

You can see a bit here.

These dogs are pure carnivores

and in the wild eat anything from small lizards and rodents

to bigger animals such as sheep and even water buffalo.

We're being watched.

And they devour everything except the bones,

which our Roar Ranger needs to pick up.

Here's some more.

We'll take that.

-How often do they get fed?

-These get fed every other day.

-You see the puppies?

-Oh, yeah.

-They're still quite young, so they're quite small.

-Ah!

The four pups were born several weeks ago.

At birth, dholes have a dark coat, which becomes redder as they grow.

At around three months, it will be the same colour as the adults'.

There's some ribs here.

And here's the big one. Do you want to carry that?

-Oh, it's heavy.

-Let's take it over to the safety porch.

I think that's all of it. Did you see any more?

-I don't think so.

-I think we're done, then.

Right, we'll just load these on the bike.

Get them out the way and we've got one more job to do.

Right. And now we'll put the fresh in.

Dholes either hunt for their prey or scavenge anything they can find

but in the park, they get big chunks of fresh meat.

You all right with that bit?

-You got it?

-Yeah.

-It's quite heavy.

-Shall I just put it in there?

-Yeah. Put it in the safety porch.

Pretty disgusting.

I've just seen it all chopped up.

The dholes tend not to fight each other for food.

They get their share by being speedy eaters.

Right, put it anywhere round here.

A dhole can eat a quarter of its own weight in meat in one sitting,

so it's quite heavy work.

What's harder, carrying the meat or cleaning the pond?

I prefer cleaning the pond.

-Why, because it's not so smelly?

-Yeah.

-That's everything done for today.

-I'll go and have a snooze, now.

Obviously, it's quite a difficult job, quite strenuous work.

I was glad I didn't have to do it. She did very well.

What did Katey think of the dholes?

Nice to see that they've already recognised

kind of all that's been just done.

It's a satisfying job and I feel really appreciated.

BELLOWING

It's been a few weeks now since the park's troop of baboons

were let out into their new open-top enclosure

and they've been thriving.

We've come down to meet keeper Jamie, who has some great news for us.

-How are you doing?

-Not too bad.

-Hiya.

This is the first time I've seen them out here.

-How many have you got now then?

-30, now.

-30?

-Yeah.

-Hang on, hang on. Wasn't there 29 last time we were here?

We had another one born last Friday, so six days ago.

Oh, that's excellent news.

-So the new one's been born into this fantastic enclosure.

-Oh, yes.

-How are they getting on?

-They're doing well. We've got another three females pregnant

and they're due to give birth any day.

So is it more difficult with this new enclosure

because the little ones run off and the mums are chasing after them?

Yeah. Once they get off Mum, they generally just charge off

and Mum's like, "I've had enough."

But when they're still quite dark and they're on Mum,

they'll just stay and Mum will hold onto that tail

and they can't get anywhere.

Once they get to that size you can see there, they're off.

And with this massive new enclosure,

-do you reckon their numbers will grow?

-Oh, yeah.

Like I say, we've got three due any day now, really.

There's eight breeding females in there,

so potentially you could have, every year, eight new babies.

So this enclosure at the moment is housing 30.

Three more on the way.

It's a fantastic enclosure. How long before they take over the whole park?

-LAUGHTER

-Yeah, the whole zoo.

The shed is designed for about 45. That would be the ideal number.

The paddock can take a lot more

but unless we extend the shed out,

-45 to 50 is the limit we can comfortably hold.

-Right, OK.

Well, Jamie, it's great coming down here. Congratulations on the birth of the new baboon

-and hopefully we'll see the three little ones very soon.

-Thanks.

While we get acquainted with the baboons,

check out what's coming up on the next episode of Roar.

I get an amazing opportunity to get up close

to one of the rarest captive creatures in the country.

That's amazing. What a beautiful, beautiful animal.

Plus find out why a gelada baboon needs teeth this big

when all they eat is grass.

And the clouded leopards are some of the best climbers in the world,

so just how do the keepers catch them?

That's all coming up on the next Roar.

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