Hotel Armadillo Natural World

In the heart of Brazil lives an animal so elusive

few have ever seen it in the wild.

It's an armadillo.

Some kinds of armadillo are no bigger than an orange.

But this rare one is the size of a pig.

This is the giant armadillo.

For the first time,

one man is shining a light into their mysterious world.

In some ways, giant armadillos can be considered a ghost species.

People do not know that they exist.

Now, at last, their lives are being revealed.

Just to be able to see this right now is just amazing.

Nobody gets to see this.

There's the baby.

And their most intimate moments shared.

But these animals have been hiding an even bigger secret.

One that could be vital to the survival

of much other wildlife around here.

Can you hear that? There's an animal inside.

It's a six-banded armadillo, using the giant armadillo burrow.

These extraordinary animals could well hold the key

to saving one of the wildest places on earth.

Welcome to Hotel Armadillo.

Brazil's Pantanal is a place unlike any other.

Covering more than 140,000 square kilometres,

this is the largest tropical wetland in the world.

Unlike the lands around the Amazon, which are covered by high forest,

the Pantanal consists of vast expanses of flooded grassland...

..with only here or there a patch of dry savannah or a stretch of trees.

Prone to intense drought and severe floods,

this is a landscape of extremes.

A huge diversity of species live here.

Including the secretive giant armadillo.

Solitary, nocturnal, and extremely rare...

..it digs huge underground burrows up to six metres deep...

..and spends three quarters of its life in them, underground.

Until recently, we knew virtually nothing of their lives in the wild.

But Arnaud Desbiez, the founder of the Giant Armadillo Project,

has changed that.

When I started the Giant Armadillo Project,

I'd already been working and living in the Pantanal for eight years.

But during those eight years I had never seen a giant armadillo.

It was a species I really wanted to see.

Even finding signs of giant armadillos is extremely difficult.

But gradually, Arnaud started to build up a picture

of their hidden world.

We couldn't leave any stone unturned.

And little by little, yes, we did start finding evidence.

And it was so exciting when we got our first picture.

That was an indescribable moment because, there it was.

'The species we were working so hard to find.

'We couldn't believe it.

'It's so hard to believe that this magnificent giant

'is living right beside us.'

It's right there.

But you don't see it.

It's May, the start of Arnaud's research year.

But this season's expedition could be different.

He has used camera traps before,

but they have only given him brief glimpses of an animal

in which he's so interested.

Now, Arnaud has newly developed gear that could give him

more continuous pictures from both above and below ground.

The team has found the burrow of a female that they've named Tracy,

in honour of the first giant armadillo researcher, Tracy Carter.

The new camera rig can record pictures by day and by night.

It's switched on by the tiniest movements

and the team are hoping the animals themselves will trigger recordings

that will reveal new things about themselves.

There are good reasons why giant armadillos are so rarely seen.

Their senses of smell and hearing are acute.

And they're exceptionally wary of people, and cameras.

The locals still consider that these animals are supernatural beings.

Monsters that come up from deep within the earth.

The cameras are rigged, but will Tracy appear?

OK, OK, Tracy is coming out.

Ah.

It's beautiful.

Armadillos are one of the most ancient of living mammals

and first appeared some 50 million years ago.

The giant species is still found in many parts of South America.

But there are so few of them that images like these are truly rare.

It's a major achievement for Arnaud and his team.

So Tracy's investigating her surroundings.

Scent is the key sense for giant armadillos.

So she's sniffing the air around her.

The burrow is her safety net.

So if anything goes wrong, if she smells anything out of place...

..if she has any concern...

..she can just run back.

Just to be able to see this right now is just amazing.

Wow.

Arnaud's research is starting to suggest something quite unexpected.

He has discovered that the huge holes they dig

are quickly taken over by other creatures

living in the neighbourhood.

So they could be critical to the survival

of the whole Pantanal ecosystem.

The giants dig a new burrow about every two days

and so provide ready-made hotels for dozens of other creatures.

And now, as Tracy checks out to spend the night feeding,

a whole army of guests are ready to check in.

The team has now recorded 77 different species

visiting Hotel Armadillo.

Small rodents are almost always the first to turn up.

It's not only the quality of the accommodation

that attracts the lodgers.

The food is good, too.

For the newly excavated earth is rich with insects and roots.

Lowland tapirs are too big to get into an armadillo burrow...

..but that's not a problem for small anteaters called tamanduas.

They visit them more frequently than any other animal.

Tamanduas spend most of their time up in the trees,

but they use giant armadillo burrows as nurseries.

Safe, cool places where they can leave a baby.

For them, a family room in Hotel Armadillo is perfect accommodation.

The Giant Armadillo Project is supported by more than 40 zoos

and aquariums worldwide.

But it has its base at the Baia das Pedras ranch

in the heart of the Pantanal.

Here, Arnaud's team work out how best to track the armadillos

and log the great range of other animals

that make use of the hotels they create.

The project currently has four individual animals

under surveillance.

Each has been fitted with a tiny transmitter

that allows Arnaud and the team to find and then track them.

An individual can have a home range of up to ten square kilometres.

And in a single year it may excavate more than 150 burrows.

Sometimes old burrows can produce a surprise.

Did you hear that? There's an animal inside.

It's a six-banded armadillo using the giant armadillo burrow.

That's why we call armadillos ecosystem engineers.

So when we say giant armadillos provide homes for other species,

this is it, look, here he is.

But it's giant armadillos the team are searching for

and soon they pick up a signal from a female they've named Isabel.

Isabel is really an armadillo that introduced us

to the giant armadillo world.

Things that now we take sometimes for granted,

things we know about giant armadillos, we learned from Isabel.

Isabel's offspring, Alex, became the first baby giant armadillo

ever studied scientifically.

The team followed his story for almost two years.

Through Alex we learned a lot about giant armadillo parental care.

So lots of discoveries we made...

We had no idea that giant armadillos,

the females were such dedicated mothers.

But then, when Alex was still less than two-years-old,

he was killed by a hungry puma.

So we all felt devastated by Alex's loss.

So the whole team was very, very sad.

And on a scientific point of view, for the project it was a huge loss

because there was lots of data we still wanted to collect.

There were still lots of questions we had.

The team are desperately hoping that Isabel will produce another baby

so that they can continue their research.

But the battery of Isabel's transmitter is running low.

So the time they have to study her at close hand is running out.

She's been tracked to a fresh burrow.

Once she emerges after dark, she'll be held in a mesh tube...

..while an alarm signal alerts the waiting team.

At giant armadillo Tracy's old burrow,

it's an hour before dawn.

Deep in the basement suite, the tamanduas are still in residence.

Upstairs in the lobby, a visitor is passing through.

It's a Brazilian porcupine.

A guest never recorded before

and one that brings the list of different species to 78.

Another indication of the Pantanal's amazing biodiversity.

As dawn breaks, the female tamandua heads out to feed.

Ants and termites make up more than 90% of their diet.

And an adult needs to consume thousands of them every day.

But while the mother feeds, the baby is vulnerable.

A pair of tayras have picked up the scent of the youngster.

Baby tamanduas are sometimes killed

by these metre-long relatives of the weasel.

But the tayras have come to Hotel Armadillo for a different reason.

The open ground and the soft earth makes this an ideal spot for mating.

The tayras move on, and mother tamandua returns.

But the infant seems to have been alarmed

by the scent of these predators and it's behaving aggressively.

TAMANDUA SNICKERS

Not the warmest of welcome homes.

But the powerful defensive display

has shown that the youngster is able to fend for itself

and is now ready to leave the safety of Hotel Armadillo.

ALARM BEEPS

The alarm is sounding.

Isabel is in the trap.

Once dawn breaks,

she's transferred to a large box and taken to a clearing.

The Giant Armadillo Project employs two vets

who have developed specialist knowledge of this rare creature.

-WHISPERS:

-Camilla just applied the anaesthetic and now we have to wait.

Arnaud has worked out

that a giant armadillo's gestation period is five months.

But he has no way of telling whether or not Isabel is expecting a baby.

However, he takes the chance to check her general health

and collect samples of her hair and blood and other tissues.

A giant armadillo can weigh an astonishing 50 kilos.

The armour-plated skin is made of a combination of horn and bone.

Flexible and strong,

it makes an adult giant armadillo almost predator proof.

HE SPEAKS HIS OWN LANGUAGE

They are superbly equipped for digging.

Giant armadillo front claws can be more than 20cm long.

They give Isabel the ability to rip open termite mounds

and excavate burrows in really hard ground.

She is a living bulldozer.

Her back feet are shovel shaped and so efficient that,

big though she is,

she can disappear below ground in less than 20 minutes.

Every single part of a giant armadillo is fascinating for Arnaud.

I'm collecting hair off a giant armadillo.

They have tiny little hairs between the scales.

So little is known about giant armadillos

that every piece of data is precious.

As the mother of Alex,

Isabel helped Arnaud to discover a great deal about her secret world.

I know you're not supposed to have favourites...

..but we learned so much with her

and spent so much time with her...

..she holds a really special place in my heart.

As the final samples are collected, Isabel starts to recover.

The armadillos are always released

into the same burrows where they were caught.

Because this is an animal we've been monitoring already for a while,

the transmitter's going to stop working soon, she's losing her batteries.

So we're a little bit sad and a little bit emotional

because I think this is probably the last time we see her physically

or get a chance to put our hands on her.

So it's kind of like saying goodbye to her now.

She's still a little unsteady from the anaesthetic.

But she'll have plenty of time to sleep it off

once she's got back underground.

Beautiful.

The team may never see Isabel again.

But, with luck, the new camera traps will enable them

to monitor her progress in detail.

One day she may even be seen with a new baby

and then the work they started with Alex will continue.

But that remains a dream for the team,

one that sometimes seems almost impossible.

The Pantanal may be rich with wildlife,

but this place is also home to people.

The traditional way of cattle ranching here, however,

gives wildlife plenty of room to thrive.

Throughout the seasons, cowboys move the herds around the Pantanal

from pasture to pasture.

It's a system that has been used here for over 250 years.

The edges of the pastures are dotted with the termite mounds

that are crucial food stores for the giant armadillos.

Arnaud is also rigging these with cameras.

The team are hoping that footage they capture

will confirm their suspicion that the armadillos

are providing something more than accommodation in their hotels.

Could it be that they're also in the restaurant business?

It's 11am.

The hottest part of the day is approaching.

Soon, temperatures will reach more than 40 Celsius.

But deep underground, in the basement of Hotel Armadillo,

the baby tamandua is enjoying a more tolerable 24 degrees.

Having been alone now for more than 12 hours, it's very hungry.

It's not the only animal that needs a meal.

On the pasture near the burrow,

a family party of coatis are looking for food.

These close relatives of the raccoon

are also occasional visitors to Hotel Armadillo.

As the sun reaches its highest point,

they head towards the burrow and the shady forest.

They're followed closely by a group of peccaries.

Peccaries often follow coatis

to collect the fruit that the coatis knock from the trees.

But today the choicest morsels on offer

are the exposed roots and shoots around the burrow entrance.

Unfortunately, a 30-kilo peccary

can easily create major structural damage to the hotel.

A collapsed roof would be a disaster for any resident.

Once they've gone, the baby tamandua makes its move.

It's now out on its own.

Hotel Armadillo has vacancies.

Back at the termite mound,

Arnaud is keen to check the camera trap for visitors.

Bang on cue, at half past seven, the first visitor.

It's a big male giant armadillo.

That's crazy, the strength of these animals is absolutely insane.

Termite mounds are extremely hard.

And the giant armadillo is one of the few animals

able to tear into them like this.

But once it's collected enough termites

with its long, sticky tongue, it will move on.

Their powerful claws open up big holes in the mound.

Which means other animals can benefit from the efforts

of the ecosystem's chief digger.

And here, half an hour after, a giant anteater comes.

This is fantastic, it's perfect, it just illustrates, you know,

how both these two giants of the Pantanal feed on the same resources.

The relationship between giant anteaters and giant armadillos

has become increasingly interesting to the team.

Both animals exploit the same food sources,

so how do these two giants coexist?

The team are planning to catch and radio tag an anteater

so that its movements can be plotted alongside that

of the tagged armadillos.

But first, you need to catch your animal.

And that's best done at dusk.

It's getting a little too dark,

so we probably have maybe five more minutes of light

where we can actually see what we're doing

and after that, we have to call it a day.

The light has almost gone,

but vet Danilo has spotted an anteater in the shadows.

HE PANTS

One giant anteater successfully in the bag.

That's quite a run.

Fitting a radio transmitter on a giant anteater

is every bit as challenging

as doing so on an anaesthetised giant armadillo.

They have just one hour in which to fit the anteater

with the special collar.

Once on, it'll give the team a GPS reading every 20 minutes.

The data will then reveal exactly how this other giant

fits into the armadillo's world.

Perhaps this season,

giant anteaters will appear for the first time at Hotel Armadillo.

Just 5km away, there's a freshly dug burrow.

Beneath the surface, giant armadillo Tracy is stirring.

Soon she'll head off to feed,

leaving behind more vacant accommodation available

for use by other animals.

A single giant armadillo creating 15 new hotels every month

must have a major effect on the housing market in the Pantanal

and benefit hundreds of other animals.

Tracy will be vacating a pristine, luxury establishment,

with only one previous owner.

But after the damage done by the peccaries,

her older burrow now has something of a budget hotel atmosphere.

But that hasn't reduced its popularity with visitors.

Over the last three days, the guestbook has recorded agouti...

..lowland tapir...

..brocket deer...

..bare-faced curassow...

..and the giant's pint-size cousin, the six-banded armadillo.

It's now an important hiding place for lizards and snakes.

And they, in turn, attract a specialist hunter.

Red-legged seriemas eat reptiles.

And now Hotel Armadillo becomes transformed into Tracy's Diner.

The total number of different species recorded at burrows

now stands at 79.

Whether you're a crab-eating fox or an ocelot,

Hotel Armadillo has something for everyone.

With such extraordinary numbers of animals

relying on the giant armadillo,

it's not surprising that Arnaud and his team

consider the animal to be an ambassador for biodiversity.

But astonishingly,

many of the local people don't even realise that the animals exist.

So getting the message out there in the community

is a critical part of the Giant Armadillo Project.

How can you care about a species you don't even know you have?

My kids at school have projects on Arctic mammals.

On the African Savannah.

Somehow we forget to celebrate

the amazing animals and plants in our own backyard.

We're worried about what is going to be left for our children.

And most importantly, will they care?

'That's what's really scary.

'We need to show them the incredible role

'this species plays in the ecosystem.'

THEY SPEAK IN THEIR OWN LANGUAGE

'I love seeing the faces of kids

'when they see their first picture of a giant armadillo.

'We need these kids to grow up and care.

'For biodiversity. For nature.'

And the giant armadillo's future ultimately depends on them caring.

There's intriguing news from the field.

While Arnaud was visiting the school,

project biologist Gabriel has made a remarkable discovery.

A freshly dug armadillo burrow with the entrance firmly earthed up.

It was close to the spot where the team released Isabel,

the female who lost her baby, Alex.

Hotel Armadillo would only close like this for one sort of guest.

A baby giant armadillo.

Gabriel was able to set up cameras but, frustratingly,

he had to leave the area before he could check the images.

Seeing Isabel with another baby is very important to the project.

I want to pick up where we left off with Alex.

There are so many questions we still have.

Arnaud and the team are back in their Pantanal headquarters

within 24 hours.

We just arrived last night.

And we're going to go straight to Isabel's territory.

And it's almost too good to be true, it's hard to believe,

so I want to see it with my own eyes.

The burrow is quickly located.

And the recording played back.

It is definitely Isabel.

But where's the baby?

OK then, at night at 6pm, she leaves on the 31st

and nothing has come into the burrow, nothing has happened.

2nd of September.

This is where it should happen now. She opens the burrow.

We could not see any image of a baby.

We both checked together, Daniel and I,

'we looked at the cameras several times.'

The images show nothing.

There was no baby giant armadillo.

Even more frustratingly, she's moved to a new burrow.

And with her transmitter now completely dead,

it's not possible to follow her by radio.

I think one of the biggest challenges through this project

is the species itself.

Giant armadillos occur at such low densities and are so hard to find.

The secret, I think, is persistence.

Never giving up and being in this for the long run.

It may be a lean period for Arnaud and the team,

but back at Hotel Armadillo,

business is booming by day and night.

Since the team first located Tracy in May,

she's excavated more than 50 new burrows.

Recent visitors caught on camera include crab-eating fox,

ocelot,

and exactly what the team were hoping for, a giant anteater.

That brings the total guest list to 80 species.

Baby giant anteaters are now appearing in the Pantanal,

each clinging tightly to its mother's back.

They're relatively easy to see,

making the search for the baby giant armadillo even more frustrating.

The team have travelled almost 100km in the last few days.

But they didn't find a telltale closed burrow.

And, even more worryingly, part of Isabel's territory is in flames.

CRACKLING

Fire is a natural part of life in the Pantanal.

It's used by the ranchers

to encourage new growth when the rains arrive.

But with the growing intensity of ranching,

the frequency of fires has increased.

And they may now burn out of control...

..destroying giant armadillo habitat

and therefore undermining the part the species plays

in maintaining the wonderful diversity of this place.

At a local level, and sometimes international level,

it really feels like biodiversity does not stand a chance.

And we see this with our own eyes all around us.

The changes, impacts and cascading effects of our actions

are becoming bigger and bigger.

And seeing these vast expanses of cash crops...

..where you cannot even hear a single bird sing...

..and you see the number of animals killed on our roads...

..you sometimes feel like a fool for thinking

you're going to make a difference.

You feel powerless.

It feels impossible.

I think what keeps us going is that we love what we do.

I love the life I lead, I love what I do.

Sheer persistence has led Arnaud to a burrow deep in the forest.

This is it, this is it. This is what we're looking for.

HE WHISTLES

The burrow entrance is firmly earthed up.

It must be Isabel.

This is definitely the burrow with the baby.

What's typical of it is this sand that's on top of the burrow

and that's because she closes the burrow,

something she never does unless she's protecting a baby.

So she left to go forage and she leaves the baby in here.

Now, it should be a simple case of setting up the remote cameras

around the sealed burrow to capture pictures of Isabel's return.

But they'll have to wait until dawn to see the results.

Yeah, so we're very curious to see...

We just saw footprints of Isabel going to the burrow,

so we believe that she's inside.

And let's just make sure that she hasn't taken the baby out.

So we're going to go and check it out.

There, she's coming out.

She carefully builds a ramp.

If there was a baby, this is where it would happen, here.

No, I don't have the baby.

There's the baby. I have the baby, yeah.

Oh, this is amazing.

Wow!

She's leaving, she's taking the baby out.

She took him out right here. These are their tracks.

The team's discovery of Isabel's baby

confirms that giant armadillos only produce a single infant

once every three years.

So each new birth is even more precious than anyone realised.

Not just for giant armadillos but for the whole ecosystem.

The more Arnaud and his team discover

about this extraordinary creature,

the better they will be able to protect it.

And the more homes there will be for all the other creatures

that habitually live in the accommodation

that the armadillos create.

And the team's commitment to doing just that remains unwavering.

The battle to save the giant armadillo...

..is the battle to save biodiversity.

It's all the same.

It's all together.

We have a pact with giant armadillos

and we are in this for the long run.

I really feel that we can make a difference.

I don't think you could ask for much more than that.

For Hotel Armadillo's camera assistant, Fergus Gill,

filming in the Pantanal was a completely new experience.

It's really a world away from anywhere else I've ever been.

It's almost like something from Jurassic Park.

Nearly got you.

He joined director cameraman Justin Purefoy

and wildlife cameraman Lindsay McCrae

to film the elusive giant armadillo

and the animals that visit their burrows.

Soon as we put our camera traps out, of course we're going to see

some of these amazing creatures visiting daily.

Quite quickly we realised the reality was not so straightforward.

Our entire first trip,

we didn't get anything other than rats on our camera traps.

We set our camera trap and the cameras would fall over.

We'd set up cameras and they would be knocked over by animals.

Really, everything we tried came up short.

That's great, I wonder if we can get it even further down?

You may have longer arms than me, but that's as far as I could reach.

I've got tiny, wee short arms. I'm like a T-Rex!

It's so bright.

And once again...

Rats. It could only be rats.

Oh, no.

If it was easy, people would have done it by now.

WHIRRING

And there was worse to come.

We were flying our drone down at the wetland one morning and it was going fine,

we were getting some really nice shots actually,

probably our best aerials so far.

Then all of a sudden, we noticed the drone started dropping a little bit.

It crashed into the water and it's tried to recover itself.

We were watching it slowly sink into the flood plain.

We rushed out, got in a boat, and we tried to find it as best we could,

but it was a needle in a haystack.

There were caiman, at times, just tens of feet away.

Not only them, but there's the animals you can't see.

There are piranhas, there are stingrays.

You really had to be careful where to place your feet.

Then suddenly, Arnaud said he felt something.

Yay!

By that point, it must have been in the water for five hours.

We took it back and we dried it out and the footage was there.

Back at Hotel Armadillo,

the proprietor and the guests finally started to arrive.

So we'd been camera trapping an individual call Tracy for a number of days.

And she seemed like quite a good armadillo

to try and take another step with.

And we really just threw everything at it,

hoping to film a giant armadillo in colour,

something no-one has ever been able to do before.

We took a gamble.

We set up a lighting rig outside a burrow we knew Tracy was in.

We put Lindsay as close as we dared let him go to the burrow.

So really, what we want to get, probably for the first time ever,

a giant armadillo on camera with a cameraman there operating it.

We had no idea what was going to happen.

This giant armadillo just emerges from underground.

Even from where we were, you could see these amazing claws,

this relic almost of a time of dinosaurs.

We were able to film them in a way

that no-one ever has before and it was extraordinary.

I'll never forget it.