Episode 24 Roar

Today on Roar, a baby giraffe is abandoned by his mother.

Without help, he won't survive.

Can the keepers and another giraffe help save him?

Johny, Johny, come quick, there's a problem at the bat cave.

A problem, you say?

I'll be there right away.

I came as fast as I could.

Whoa, we're just running low on fruit for the Egyptian fruit bats.

-No need for the costume.

-It's even got ears.

Let's just get on with the show.

Coming up, first, it was Robo Deer.

He survived the wolf pack.

Now, it's Robo Zebra.

Will he last as long when the pride of lions come hunting?

Rani volunteers to help with tortoise bath time.

But first, there's a spot of weightlifting to be done.

She is so, so heavy! I am genuinely worried about putting her down.

Oh. Oh. Oh.

And how nosy are this lot?

Can they blow keeper Kat away

with their tongue-in-cheek anteater questions?

But first, we're going up to the East Africa reserve, where this year,

there has been a giraffe baby boom.

The first calf was young Kiza.

He's now six-weeks old, and he's finding his legs

racing around the park, often chased by the zebra.

Then, in a first for Roar, the keepers manage to get

this amazing footage of mum Becky giving birth to her baby, Kate.

Here we go, here we go.

Both of the youngsters are now doing really well.

But unfortunately, not all births go smoothly.

Two days ago,

Ella gave birth to her first calf in the middle of the busy reserve.

Ryan Hockley is deputy head of the section.

For a first-timer, she went through labour well

and gave birth pretty quickly.

Did everything absolutely

perfectly fine, but the second it sort of hit the ground, really,

she took a few paces away, and I think a combination of

all the other giraffe around it, it just prevented her going back to it.

With Ella showing no interest in her calf, the keepers had to

step in to try and save the baby's life.

We grabbed a trailer. Grabbed the calf.

Brought the calf up here. Put him in a box,

and we brought Ella up with a couple other females for company and tried

to get Ella into a box with him, but she wouldn't have it whatsoever.

The calf desperately needed milk if he was to survive.

The keepers had to feed the baby by tube -

he was too young to take a bottle.

So we tube-fed him for the first two days,

and then started trying to bottle feed.

Head of section Andy Hayton is now faced with some very

difficult decisions.

We've never had a situation where we've had to hand-rear,

so this is all new ground for me with a giraffe, and it's difficult.

We're walking a really fine line between getting involved too much

and not getting involved enough.

The keepers will try anything to save this baby's life.

They keep putting him and mum Ella back together, but unfortunately,

she simply isn't interested.

However, there may be some help from an unexpected source.

Experienced mum Becky had a calf just a week ago.

The keepers are wondering if she might raise

the abandoned baby alongside her own.

Becky...she's a fantastic mum.

If anything, she's over-mumsy

towards her own calves. She's recently had a calf.

Would there be a possibility that she would accept it?

You don't want to see something just ebb away and lose its life

in front of you, so anything is worth a shot.

The keepers put the three-day-old calf in with Becky and her new baby,

but will she accept him and let him feed?

If she doesn't, then the youngster may not survive.

We'll be back later with more news.

If you're a regular Roar viewer, then you may remember this -

Robo Deer.

Underneath all that disguise is just a radio-controlled car.

We put him with a wolf pack to try to watch their hunting behaviour.

Unfortunately, the big bad wolves were a little scared of Robo Deer,

so we thought we'd give him a complete makeover to test out

the hunting skills of the safari park's ultimate killers, the lions.

Buckle up, viewers, this...could get rough!

-I'm with Gemma. How are you?

-Fine, thanks.

-How many lions are here?

We've got a pride of seven in here at the moment.

-So this could well be Robo Zebra's last outing.

-I think so.

Do you think they'll go for it?

Have you ever put a moving object in here before?

No. I think they will definitely go for it. They're stimulated

to feed by movement of the prey, so this should be a good show today.

This will be tough for Robo Zebra, but what's the plan, Gemma?

I think we should get into the vehicle.

Right, that sounds like a good plan to me. Well, safety first.

Good luck, Robo Zebra.

-Are we ready to go?

-I think so.

-Come on, guys, let's take it away.

I'm quite nervous for him.

Oh, no, they're coming.

A bit faster, guys.

Are they going to get him?

I thought they might be a bit scared of him.

No, no, no, no!

No, they've got Robo Zebra!

Oh, no!

No, let's go back and have a look.

-So who got him there?

-That was Jazz.

I noticed - that's quite interesting. They've gone

for the tyre, the soft part. Is that what they do with prey?

Go for the vulnerable parts of the prey?

They would go for the neck first to try and suffocate and strangulate.

-So yeah, they would go for those parts first.

-That's incredible.

Why do you think Jazz has ran off with the zebra?

Probably so she can just be on her own so there's less competition,

so nobody else is fighting over it.

They might not be friends right now,

but they definitely hunted together there.

Would they do that out in the wild?

It would be the lionesses that would go out and hunt.

But they would all cooperate.

The male would eat first, followed by the lionesses and then any cubs.

So the female of the species is more deadly than the male?

-Yeah, absolutely.

-I like it.

-Who got the robo part of the zebra?

-It looks like Sweet Pea.

Gemma, initially, when they all ran up to Robo Zebra and his little hat

went flying off, I thought "He's not going to last two minutes".

But we've just had a look and it's looking a bit messy,

-but in one piece, really?

-Yeah.

I'm actually quite surprised myself. I thought it would all be gone.

Maybe because nobody really was arguing over it,

maybe she feels she's got more time with it.

So she can just rip it up in her own time.

Are they just like our cats at home that are very playful, so that any

little toys, they'll have a play about with it and rip it to shreds?

They're very playful when it comes to novel objects. They will try

and get in there and see what it's all about and have a play, really.

Well, listen, I think they made really short work of Robo Deer.

Alas, I knew him well.

It's RIP. This could be the last time we ever see Mr Robo Zebra.

Up at the giraffery, the young calf that has been abandoned by his mum

is now six days old.

So far, he's keeping his strength up and the keepers think he may be

suckling off another new mum, Becky, who also had a calf two weeks ago.

Safari park vet Duncan Williams has come to see how he's doing.

So how's he getting on, then?

Well, a bit of an enigma, really, Duncan, because we're not seeing him

drink that much off Becky, but obviously he is getting something,

because you can see he's out and about, he looks bright, alert.

He's got energy. So we're assuming that he's

just getting what he needs at night.

If he manages to get enough from Becky, she'll need a lot

more energy of course. If she manages to rear two,

-that will be pretty amazing, I think.

-Yeah.

Becky may accept this little one and bring him up,

but giraffes only usually have one calf, so it's not certain.

In effect, he's stealing milk from Becky.

She tolerates it to a certain extent, but she's not that keen,

and he has to grab every opportunity.

He has to have his wits about him. Luckily, he's a strong individual,

and he seems to be pretty up for it.

But by the afternoon, a day that had begun so hopefully

suddenly turns to worry.

The calf has taken a turn for the worse.

The keepers have to act, and quickly.

We're a little bit concerned. He's looking a bit weak.

We don't know why he looks like that,

but rather than stand around trying to figure out why he looks weak -

is it because of the sunlight or is he just tired today? You know -

every minute you're not doing something around these,

you're losing valuable time and ground.

So we're just going to see if he wants to take some milk.

Good boy.

The baby's life is on a knife edge.

All the keepers can do now is tube-feed him more milk,

and hope it saves him.

'As much as we like everything to be mother reared, we're not'

going to stand back and watch something decline and die, you know.

That's not what we're about. We're here to look after the animals.

I don't know.

It's hard. I wish I could speak giraffe.

With a litre of milk now in the baby,

his energy, for the time being, is restored.

But there is still a hope

that Becky may accept him and raise him naturally.

She's concerned about where he's gone,

and may be forming a bond with him.

The keepers need to know if Becky is allowing him

to feed off her overnight and if so, for how long.

The only way to do that is to rig a special camera

that can see in the dark.

What we've done in here above me, we have an infrared camera set up

and this is looking down on to the pen where Becky,

her calf and Ella's calf are at night.

So we think that Becky is feeding him at night,

but for our own peace of mind, we'd actually like some evidence of this.

With the camera set up,

Ryan and Andy are desperate to see Becky looking after the baby.

But when they come in tomorrow, what will the footage actually reveal?

What do you call a lizard that sings?

A rap-tile.

Ee-aw! Ee-aw!

What do you get if you cross an earthquake with a cow?

A milkshake.

SHE CLUCKS

What do you call a chicken in a shell suit?

-I don't know.

-An egg.

THEY LAUGH

Oh, dear. This camera, it's filthy.

I can barely see you lot at home.

Oh, that's better. Sound man.

Filthy. Look at that. It's perfect!

Anyone else?

There's a tortoise here. That needs cleaning.

How clean is your house, eh?

It will be anyway, after I'm finished with it. It'll be gorgeous.

Bev, are you next?

-I hope not!

-I believe you want me to give you a hand with

-the tortoise and give it a nice little clean.

-Yes, please, Rani.

She's a bit dusty and filthy, so she needs a bit of a dip in the pond.

You can probably lose the rubber gloves and the cloth.

OK. I was just trying to be a little bit helpful. Who do we have here?

-We have Michelle, a ten-year-old African spurred tortoise.

-Me-shell.

Oh, dear, Bev. She's amazing.

She's absolutely huge. Like nothing I've ever seen before.

She is big. She's about 30kg, which is very, very heavy.

But she's not fully grown yet.

She can easily get up to 60kg

and much, much, much bigger.

So we're going to have to coax her over to the pond.

What do I do? Lay a trail of food?

Well, it would probably be quicker if we lifted her up.

She is quite heavy, Rani.

So just put your hands underneath, not anywhere near the holes,

because if she puts her legs back in, it could pinch.

Oh, my goodness, it weighs a tonne. She's going to crush my fingers!

I actually...

genuinely am struggling.

OK, lift. She is so, so heavy.

I actually genuinely am quite worried about putting her down.

-Place her down. That's great.

-How do we get her to go in here?

Are we just going to gently lower her down?

Twist her round so she goes in head first, so she sees

what she's going into. Are you ready?

Let me go on this side. I think this hand needs a break. That's better.

If I twist round...that's perfect.

OK, and she's head first.

-Into the water.

-If I just shuffle her...

-Will she go into the water?

-She's a little bit more reluctant.

We also have another tortoise called Rex, the little boy,

and he's great at this, but she's a little bit more reluctant.

So how am I going to get Michelle to take a bath?

Well, if I just shuffle her and if you just keep

flicking water up, it will encourage her to hopefully stay there.

You said she looks a bit dusty. Does it matter if the shell's dusty?

-Yes, it does.

-Why?

-It's got very tiny holes in the shell

which absorb all the sunlight. That's how they get their energy.

I didn't know it had such benefits. I really just thought it was shelter.

Oh, right. No, she's like a little solar panel.

She absorbs all the sunshine through her shell,

which makes her grow and process the calcium and all that kind of thing.

So if it's all covered in mud, she's not going to do as well.

Well, let's have a little look.

We've given her a quick splash about.

-Clean enough?

-Yes, she looks nice and shiny. The dust's come off

compared to Rex, who looks grubby.

-He looks grubby. Shall we give him a bath?

-Shall we?

I think I need to pump some weights first. Here we go.

It's the next morning up at the giraffery.

Having set up a camera overnight to see if the young calf is feeding

off foster mum Becky, the keepers are desperate to see the results.

If he is, there is a chance that Becky may be accepting him

and will rear him alongside her own young calf.

What we're going to do now is get the hard-drive recorder -

we've had it running all night - and see if we've got any

concrete evidence of this little chap actually drinking or not.

So fingers crossed,

there's going to be something in this little magic box,

so we'll have a look at it now.

-Here we go, mate.

-Right.

-Let's see.

-But will the footage be good news?

Just seeing now, he had his head

clamped in one position, so he was obviously on a teat.

He's getting a really good drink there.

Yeah, he's getting something there, yeah.

He's just not quitting, is he?

Becky's just discovered the camera and was staring at it.

He definitely got some then.

-I think he had a really good drink there.

-It's encouraging.

The youngster is managing to take some milk from Becky.

What we've seen on there really is, I think for us, good news.

Actually seeing him there for... I don't know how long that was...

15, 20, 25 seconds, maybe,

and he'll be getting a lot of milk in that time.

I wouldn't like to say how much, but it'll be a really good drink.

But he's really had to work hard for it which, on the down side

means he's spending a lot of energy, but the effort that

that little bloke is putting in to feed is monumental.

I mean, you've got to admire his pluck. He's amazing.

-He's really, really fighting to stay here.

-He's a fighter. Yeah, yeah.

Watching that, I'm quite proud of him, actually. Yeah, he is plucky.

It's nice to see a giraffe that's got some spirit and fight,

and he wants to be a survivor.

But is spirit and being a fighter enough?

The youngster is getting some milk from Becky,

but the keepers are taking no chances

and continue to bottle-feed him as well.

They know he's not out of the woods yet.

We'll be back at the giraffery as soon as there's more news.

It's cheat code time for the Roar game.

Today's secret code is frost678. Type that in and see what you get.

It could be treats, new animals or even a new enclosure. Happy gaming!

It's Ask The Keeper time, and we've popped down to the animal adventure

to hook up with keeper Kat to see what she knows about

these amazing animals here, the giant anteater.

They are incredible. I hope you've had your nose in your books, Kat -

We've got loads of questions, and this lot do not play.

Edward, have you got a question?

How much do the anteaters weigh?

Well, the anteaters actually weigh around 60kg.

How many ants does an anteater eat before it gets full up?

These guys can eat an incredible 35,000 ants or termites a day.

So you can see Maroni here -

her incredible claws are about ten centimetres long. What she does is,

she breaks down into the ant hill or the termite hill,

their tongue comes out and then they lick up all those tasty bugs.

Ugh, gross! Tasty bugs.

Why do they like ants so much? What is it?

Basically, anteaters have no teeth.

So what they've got to do with their tongues is, the saliva comes out

and then all the ants stick to the saliva and it pulls them back in.

So because they don't have any teeth, they need to eat

smaller bugs to be able to get filled up.

I think Kat's showing off with her knowledge now.

Owen, have you got a really tough question?

Yes. Can anteaters swim?

Fantastic question. These anteaters are fantastic swimmers.

If you look over into their enclosure,

they've got a really, really big pool

which they enjoy going in and also sometimes,

they have a bit of a shower as well.

There's a sensor so when they walk past,

the shower comes on for them as well,

-so they are fantastic swimmers.

-How long are their tongues?

These tongues of the anteaters are actually about 60 centimetres long,

so you can see they've got very, very long noses, and basically

they bring them out of their two-centimetre gap of a mouth

and into those ant hills, so they can wriggle their tongues round

to collect all those bugs.

Kat, you're still not off the hook -

we still need to ask the Killer Question.

Come on, guys.

No peeking, Kat.

Ho!

We're ready for the Killer Question, Kat. Are you?

-Yes, bring it on!

-You look a bit nervous, and so you should be.

They've got an amazing tongue, these anteaters. What we want to know is,

how many times in a minute can an anteater flick its tongue out?

An anteater can flick its tongue out 160 times in a minute.

160...is absolutely right.

-Incredible. Isn't that incredible, guys?

-Yeah.

-That was amazing.

You answered all our questions completely correctly.

What do you think, guys? Thumbs up or thumbs down for Kat?

-Thumbs up.

-Thumbs up, easy.

Well done, Kat. Even when we upped the "ante", you showed that

you're an expert of all things anteater.

Throughout today's show, we've been following

the story of the baby giraffe whose mother has abandoned him.

He has been a little fighter, and seemed determined to live.

This morning, though, there has been some terrible news.

Our sad news is that

Ella's calf, our baby giraffe, has died.

He fought really hard for almost two weeks,

but in the end, it just wasn't quite enough and we've lost him.

The young giraffe had tried desperately to stay alive,

and the keepers were hand feeding him day and night.

We certainly thought we had turned a corner and were getting him

him to accept the bottle and feeders as we would like to.

But whilst Becky's own calf, Kate,

was getting stronger and stronger, he was becoming weaker and weaker.

We came in

twice on Monday evening to give him more feeds.

We got not far off a couple of litres of milk into him.

But during the small hours of the morning, he was slowly fading.

As our night-camera footage shows,

the other baby, Kate, must have known something was wrong.

As we had left Monday evening, we had sat him down in a box,

and he was more or less in exactly the same place in the morning,

so I think what had happened is, at some point during the night,

he had literally slipped away in his sleep.

So it was crushing for us, really.

You work with animals because you love them, so obviously you do

start to bond with them, especially, you know, an animal like him,

because he was a little fighter.

Even the guys who like to think they're a little bit tough,

like myself, felt the same thing. We were all massively disappointed.

Disappointed that he slipped away like that,

but also disappointed that we couldn't have done more for him.

But the team have to pick themselves up and carry on,

as there are more giraffe babies expected soon.

Eliza's due any day now and we also have Jemima due

later on in the year, who's a good, experienced mum, so we have

high hopes for Jemima to do it without any interference without us.

So yeah, everyone's trying to move on and we're just trying

to stay upbeat about everything.

Question for you. What's slimy, warty and lives in a pond,

-apart from Rani?

-Ooh!

-A cane toad.

We've come down here today to give a cane toad a bit of a health check.

Sarah, we're prepared. We're ready to help. What can we do?

Do you want to hold on to him while

I have a little look over him to make sure he's nice and healthy?

All right. Ooh, a firm grip. A firm grip of the little cold animal.

-Have you got him?

-Is he cold?

-He's quite cold, actually.

So where do we start with this health check?

We'll check his eyes, make sure they're nice and bright

and clear, which they are. They're lovely.

Make sure he's breathing properly and this area's moving correctly.

Is that doing well? He seems to be going for it.

-Yeah, he's quite wriggly today.

-His legs have got stuck!

He has huge feet.

Very big, powerful legs, and you can see his toes

are webbed there as well.

-Wow, OK.

-He looks fine. He looks in very good condition.

What kind of things would a toad eat?

They eat small insects and anything they can fit into their mouths,

They're quite destructive. Anything they come across, they'll gulp down.

I'm going to flip reverse.

If they're quite destructive and will eat anything,

will anything eat these big cane toads?

-Well, they're very poisonous.

-Now you tell us!

I'm glad I'm not holding him!

They give off a toxin through their skin, and also,

they've got these little shoulder

raised areas which hold venom that they can fire out as well.

So animals that do try and eat them

often end up dead within a few hours.

-Nature's tank.

-Nothing like me at all, you see, Johny.

Well, it's time for this toad to hit the road.

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

Sarah, have him back, please.

Next time on Roar, there's an emergency up in the big-cat reserve.

A lioness has been badly wounded, so the vet and keepers

must work quickly to save her life.

We go on an undercover operation to get some amazing shots

of the most dangerous animals in the park - spot 'em, Sonia - the hippos.

And our Roar Ranger is arranging a bird bath,

but it seems this lot prefer a shower.

Don't miss it.

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