Episode 1 Nature's Miracle Babies

All across the world an extraordinary group of people

are on a mission to save some of our most critically endangered animals.

We're going to meet those people,

and the animals they love.

Good, be fierce. That's what you need to be.

I'm Martin Hughes-Games.

I trained as a zoologist and I've spent the last 30 years making wildlife films.

You've eaten my microphone again!

I've seen with my own eyes the challenges that are facing our natural world.

I'm going to take you on a journey around the world to discover the courage, the commitment,

the sheer blood, sweat and tears that it takes to drag a species

back from the edge of extinction, to create nature's miracle babies.

In this show we'll follow the personal struggles of three animal mums to be.

These mums are trying to give birth to some of the rarest babies on the planet.

So you could say the stakes are fairly high.

Gentle giant Behan, has to endure a gruelling two day labour.

We are starting to get concerned with her.

And feisty tamarin Eulalia may attack her own newborns.

We're very worried about the babies when they come out.

We start with a species famous for being fiendishly hard to get pregnant.

And to meet it, I've come to central China

the last stronghold of one of the world's most iconic species.

It's charismatic, it's controversial,

it's a puzzle, but it's also extremely beautiful.

It's the giant panda.

This city, Chengdu, is the nexus, the hub, the worldwide centre

of panda reproduction and basically, nobody does it better.

There are nearly 100 pandas living in Chengdu.

And it's here that scientists have pioneered ground breaking techniques

to make baby pandas. And now they're just beginning

to share their secrets with the rest of the world.

I've never met a baby panda before.

I can't really believe this is happening!

It's breakfast time, and apparently I'm serving the morning milk.

-HE GASPS

-Wow!

I never ever thought I'd be allowed to do this.

Look at this.

This one?

You are utterly gorgeous.

Not long ago it really looked as though giant pandas might become extinct.

So the Chinese government established this breeding centre to try to turn things round.

These days things are looking brighter for the panda.

Increasing protection's being given to the forests where small wild populations still cling on.

And here in Chengdu

they really seem to have cracked the technique for making baby pandas.

You funny little bear.

Are you feeling relaxed?

These are last year's little babies

although they're a lot bigger than I thought they were going to be.

And they're certainly fairly relaxed I'd say.

It's been a hard day already.

They're getting a lot more lively now.

These little characters are irresistibly cute

but don't be fooled by that cuddly facade, these are bears -

that means teeth, claws and attitude!

I'm being ganged up on!

I'm going to be covered in cuts and bruises.

Still, as long as you have your fun,

that's all that matters!

Oh, what's the point?!

So what are the secrets of their success for producing healthy, strong little bears?

Got me.

Well, along with a few million dollars, you need hundreds

of highly trained staff working round the clock.

And it's in the nursery for the newborns where you really

get to understand the skill it takes to make baby pandas.

So this is Yuan Yuan,

this is Xiang Bo who's her keeper.

And she obviously knows him very, very well

and totally, totally trusts him.

Xiang is having to help her feed

because all the time she's got one hand full,

curved around that tiny, tiny little cub.

Would you put your hand on her tummy like that?

There's a lot of trust here.

Yuan Yuan is four times heavier and four times stronger than the youngsters I've already met.

Just imagine the damage she could do if she chose to.

There has to be absolute trust between her and her keeper Xiang Bo.

In the wild a mother panda would never let a newborn baby out of her arms,

not for a second.

Xiang Bo is pushing the trust between them to the limit.

-WHISPERS:

-How does that work?

She just let him take her tiny baby.

Not a murmur!

But she doesn't look terribly distressed about it, does she?

HE CHUCKLES

So why are they going to the trouble of separating mum from her baby?

Now mother's care is best, of course, and Yuan Yuan is an excellent mum,

but here in Chengdu, they like to give mother nature

a little bit of extra help

in the panda nursery.

All the baby pandas here at Chengdu,

they spend most of the time with mum.

But at least once a day they come in here to the nursery.

And it's a sort of insurance policy.

They can weigh them and give them a full sort of health check

and make sure they're thriving 100% OK.

And of course it gives mum a bit of a well-deserved break as well.

And if they find that the baby's maybe not putting on as much weight as they'd like

or there's any problems, they can give it a supplementary feed and bulk it up a bit.

It's actually taken them years to get these incubators right,

because of course they've got to mimic mum exactly

and that's quite tricky. The temperature for instance,

the temperature changes as the cub gets bigger and bigger,

it needs a different temperature, so that's got to be monitored all the time.

Then there's the humidity too, imagine -

the cub's held in tight to mum's fur and it's very humid down there,

so you've got to get that exactly right.

And it's this sort of attention to the fine detail

that's made Chengdu such an incredible success.

As you can see, it's a very contented little panda.

These incubators are great but you can't beat a cuddle with mum,

so it's time to reunite mother and baby.

But there's a surprise twist, and it's one of the cornerstones

of Chengdu's incredible success with the pandas.

Now, this is the really clever thing that they developed here in Chengdu,

because this baby that's just come back is not the same baby.

It's its twin!

And pandas very often give birth to twins

and sadly one of them often dies, but not here.

Because they'll take away one of the babies look after it,

put it in an incubator, give it extra food,

swap it with the other one.

So by keeping swapping the babies backwards and forwards

both the twins survive.

But that only could happen because of this extraordinary relationship that they have with the keepers.

What I've learnt from Chengdu

is the enormous amount of trust, money and skill you need

when you're in the business of breeding endangered animals.

But then, when the future of an entire species is at stake,

nothing but total commitment will do.

There have been seven births in Chengdu this year alone,

and their expertise, and their pandas,

are now being exported around the world.

I'm off to meet one of these ex-pats

to find out more about the challenges of panda breeding.

I'm heading for the USA and the Southern state of Georgia.

Here, the team at Zoo Atlanta are on a mission

to get their female panda Lun Lun pregnant.

But can they possibly be as successful as the Chinese?

-Hi.

-How's it going.

-Are you Ken?

Ken, I'm Martin Nice to meet you.

-You're big.

-Sorry.

Ken - a big man with an even bigger responsibility.

Lun Lun is on loan from Chengdu.

I say on loan, but, and this was news to me, you never own a panda,

you just rent them from China,

and the rental is one million dollars per year.

Can this million dollar mum have a million dollar baby?

The first challenge Ken faces is knowing exactly when

his pampered panda Lun Lun is in season and is able to fall pregnant.

In zoos the females are only receptive about two days,

36 hours to 48 hours out of the year. That's it!

That's incredible that they have such a tiny, tiny window of opportunity

and if you're going to be successful you have to capture that moment.

Exactly.

A lot of our efforts are geared to finding that exact 36 hours.

You miss that 36 hours, you wait another year.

But I guess some of those signs are probably quite subtle, Ken,

and it's down to you to know her well enough

-to be able to tell when that moment is about to arrive.

-Yes.

And if I've got this right and we time it right,

she IS about to come into season.

-Yes.

-We hope.

-Hopefully within the next week or so.

You've got to know your animals!

Getting Lun Lun pregnant is important for the panda population

and for the zoo, who've invested millions of dollars.

At 36 hours, that window of opportunity is horribly small,

so no wonder a large chunk of Ken's working life

is devoted to getting his panda pregnant.

And by the sound of it, this isn't going to be that easy.

Now, meet a gentle giant.

She's not waiting to get pregnant, she's waiting to give birth.

This is Behan,

a one-and-a-half tonne, Indian rhino at Whipsnade Zoo.

She may look intimidating but Behan is a sweetie.

It's hard to imagine, but recently this big girl's actually been putting on weight.

She's expecting a baby,

and she's been pregnant for almost a year-and-a-half.

At birth, Behan's baby will weigh as much as a fully grown man.

Cue Veronica, her adoring and very patient keeper.

Good girl.

'Every day we check her udder.' Let's have a look, good girl.

If she was getting really close

it wouldn't take a lot to stimulate the milk to start flowing,

which it isn't at the moment.

-Good girl.

-Veronica has known Behan since she was a baby.

She came to Whipsnade as a one-year-old calf

and Veronica has been a constant companion for 13 years.

She's very curious.

Yeah, she always likes to know what's going on

and if there's anything happening around the area,

she'll always be up there, trying to see what it is.

But she's very friendly, very friendly.

There's such a strong relationship between them

it's no wonder that Veronica is concerned about mum and baby.

It's been a 16 month wait and there are no guarantees.

It is nerve wracking but very exciting at the same time.

You never can be 100% sure. As with all animals, they're very unpredictable.

Some of them can have them very quickly and some of them have a very long labour.

Good girlie.

Hello. Are you going to give me a kiss?

Indian rhinos have been around for some ten million years.

But hunters relentlessly shot them for sport in such numbers

they were very nearly extinct by 1900.

And now, although protected by park rangers,

they're targeted by poachers for their horns.

Over 70% of the entire world population is in one park in India,

and if that park got hit by disease, flooding, civil war, it could be disastrous.

And if that happened, captive bred rhinos like Behan's baby

could offer a crucial safety net.

There's a lot at stake and nothing is being left to chance.

Behan is monitored night and day by CCTV

so Veronica can keep watch without disturbing her.

Very often, if animals know that they're being watched

it will inhibit their birth.

So it means we can do it without them even knowing we're there watching.

And it means we can always be on hand

should the need arise for us to go in and assist her for whatever reason.

But then it's just nice to be able to be there as well to actually watch the birth.

So now the end game begins.

Behan's baby will be just the third Indian rhino born in captivity this year.

Right now there's nothing Veronica can do but wait.

I'm back at Zoo Atlanta with Big Ken,

whose patience is being tried by his delightful diva Lun Lun.

You spend eight to ten hours a day with them...

-You do.

-..five to six days a week you tend to learn them.

-Pick up.

Every year she has just one very short window of 36 hours when she can get pregnant.

And the trick for Ken is to know exactly when that moment arrives.

He has to carry out daily health checks to assess her condition.

Now just watch this.

I find this almost unbelievable.

Now we're going to get a really close look at Lun Lun the female here.

I don't know how he's going to do it though.

HE BLOWS A WHISTLE Paw.

This is amazing.

Lun Lun has learnt to respond to a whistle and food rewards,

and now she has few secrets from Ken.

Good girl. Target, Target, Paw, Hold.

We do a lot of different behaviours that help us with

just the daily checks of the pandas for the vet staff and for us.

Eye.

Good girl, hold it.

So, what's this got to do with her getting pregnant?

Never seen anything like this.

She's allowing Ken to see if she's coming into season.

What did you see then, you were looking for some swelling.

We were looking at her vulva for swelling.

As she progresses through oestrus, that will indicate that she's ready.

Ah, she's not quite ready yet.

Tail down, paw.

Tail down. Good girl.

With the clock ticking,

and Lun Lun showing no signs of coming into season,

Ken has called in some hi-tech help from zoo vet Dr Sam Rivera.

He's going to use ultrasound,

just like we humans use, to take a look inside Lun Lun's womb.

Now in line.

Lun Lun's getting quite excited by all the attention

but she seems to have developed a bit of a fetish

for the lubricant.

She likes the gel,

don't know what she's doing with it, but she likes it!

-She's just covering herself in it.

-Yup, I think it smells wonderful!

Lun Lun may look like a giant teddy bear,

but in reality she's an immensely powerful animal

with an incredible bite and razor sharp claws.

So one of the keepers has to look out for Sam during the procedure.

Heather, you keep your hand there

over Dr Sam's just in case, just to remove his arm?

He can't watch her and the ultrasound at the same time, that's why I'm here.

-So you just take his hand out of the way if she gets up.

-Exactly.

-Right.

Lun Lun. Lun Lun! Lun Lun!

It's a little bit tense actually!

We're looking at the normal anatomy of the uterus when it's non pregnant.

Ok, so this is like a base line. So you can see exactly what it's like when she's not pregnant

-and then when she is you can see the difference.

-Exactly.

What impresses me, you can do it all without having to knock her out.

She's a willing participant in the whole process that's great.

Thanks to the keepers, the time that they spend, because they make it seem easy,

but it takes a long time to get them trained, to get them comfortable with these procedures.

-It's amazing to watch.

-Oh, yes, it is. It's amazing to do too.

Now the team are watching Lun Lun's every move

to see if she's coming into season

and there are lots of very subtle clues,

like does she move around more than she usually does,

and they even check on how the male next door, how he's reacting to her.

So far... nothing.

She seems to be stuck in this pre-oestrus stage, they call it.

So it's a very high stakes waiting game.

Endless patience is the name of the game when you're trying to make a miracle baby.

Heavily pregnant rhino Behan at Whipsnade Zoo,

is now carrying a baby weighing at least ten stone, maybe more!

Just looking, just looking.

It's been 16 months

but Veronica is so tuned in to Behan

she's noticed a subtle change in her behaviour.

I came in first thing this morning and checked her first thing and she was acting pretty normally then.

Then as the morning went on, she started to prefer to go back indoors

and then she was spending a lot of time laying down

and just sort of moving around and getting more comfortable.

That was a pretty good indication that things were possibly starting to happen.

Veronica's lonely vigil is coming to an end.

Behan is in early labour

and 24 hours and one sleepless night later,

Veronica lets everyone know that Behan may be getting close to giving birth.

A supportive and excited group of female keepers gathers for a sleepover.

This is going to be the ultimate girls' night in.

Everything is assembled, sleeping bags, mobile phones,

plenty of supplies, but instead of the usual rom-com chick flick,

they're going to be watching a rhino give birth.

I can't wait.

Literally I can't wait. I've got belly bubbles thinking about it.

Well, whatever turns you on.

Come on Behan.

As the night wears on with no sign of a baby,

poor old Behan is trying to keep herself busy with a bit of housework.

As you can see at the moment,

she's doing her nesting instinct

and just re-strawing up her stable

and it is just because she's feeling very uncomfortable, she doesn't really know what to do with herself.

TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS

By the morning, nothing,

and Veronica is starting to fret!

It's coming up now for a 48 hours since we first saw the early stages of labour starting.

So as she's now reaching the end of that time,

we're going to ask the vet to come down and have a look at her

and see what advice he can give us.

It's as if Behan knows the vet is on his way...

We were just giving up on her really cos she's had such a bad night.

..as almost immediately her waters break and she starts to push.

-See, you didn't have to worry.

-I was worried!

We told her you were coming!

She's pushing really hard as well.

Cross my legs!

To get her miracle baby out, Behan just needs to give one more almighty rhino-sized push.

It's time.

BEHAN GRUNTS

Yay! She did it!

Well done, Auntie!

It's a big, healthy boy.

It's all been worth while now, yes.

Just, everything, you know.

All those sleepless nights have now faded, forgotten about those.

The calf looks really good, he's a really good size.

Looks quite strong. He's already trying to stand up.

Mum looks absolutely exhausted.

After a 16 month pregnancy

and a 50 hour labour, Behan is taking a well earned rest.

He's a bit wobbly just now,

but when he grows up this little leviathan

is destined to weigh in at a colossal three tonnes!

Well, it's all been worthwhile now, yes.

And maybe one day, his descendants could go back to the wild,

the holy grail of breeding programmes around the world.

Like Whipsnade, zoos across the planet are trying to create

a captive ark - a safety net,

that could be a crucial insurance policy against extinction.

And I'm on my way to meet a creature facing

the kind of pressure that could easily wipe them out in the wild.

This is a tamarin.

And what exactly is a tamarin?

In fact, they're primates like you or I - and that means

they're highly intelligent, very sociable, amazing little animals.

Also extremely beautiful, but

these particular tamarins are in big trouble.

To understand exactly why this particular animal is struggling so much,

I'm travelling to their native Brazil and a city called Manaus on the banks of the Amazon.

Here the growing economy has led to a rapidly expanding city,

and the habitat of the pied tamarins is being gobbled up by concrete.

I'm joining one of the world's leading tamarin experts,

Dom Wormell from Jersey Zoo, on a fact finding mission.

Dom was the first to really try to save these highly intelligent little monkeys.

It's only from the air that you get the true picture of what's happening to them.

Wow, Dom, you can really see there, can't you?

There's just like a line's been drawn here.

It is, it's like zero bio-diversity one side,

huge bio-diversity the other side.

The tamarins are in there. At the moment that is one of their safe havens.

What Dom is particularly concerned about are the little slithers

of forest, which have become like islands dotted amongst the concrete.

Small populations of pied tamarins have become marooned here,

unable to reach the safety of the open forest.

With local biologist Marcello Gordo we're visiting a small group of tamarins,

just managing to hang on in a fragment of forest,

relying on the help of some local families.

I think they're coming. They've been spotted.

-They're coming, they're coming.

-Just on the right.

-There, there, there.

-You can see them?

-There! There!

-Look!

-Yes, yes, yes. Look at that!

Look, look! They're being fed. Can you see they're being fed.

Come out here. Some of the local kids.

-Look at that.

-That's amazing.

The whole troupe.

So, Dom it's not sustainable.

These wild populations, they can't live here forever.

No, what we see here is not going to stay.

All the time it's getting gnawed away, it's getting less and less.

These tamarins are safe... for now.

But Marcello's trying to relocate the most vulnerable populations

to safer places. When that's not possible, to carefully selected

Brazilian zoos where they can become part of a breeding programme.

This is the front line, this is what's happening.

-We can literally hear bulldozers taking down the forest around us.

-Yeah, they're coming.

Seeing all this destruction is utterly heartbreaking.

But Dom will never give up.

He's one of the most committed conservationists I've ever met.

He's set up a breeding programme of his own

as an insurance policy for the wild population.

So we're off to Jersey Zoo in the Channel Islands to see how that's going.

The good news is that one of his tamarins is pregnant.

But Dom is deeply concerned.

This is Eulalia. She's the expectant Mum.

You can just see here really quite swollen abdomen.

Feisty Eulalia was hand reared after her own mum attacked her.

She's a very emotionally damaged animal.

We're very worried about the babies when they come out

because last time she rejected them and actually killed one of them.

So we're all on standby to actually do a hand rearing episode.

If Eulalia's past record's anything to go by,

I think Dom has some sleepless nights ahead!

But when you're trying to pull a species back from the edge of extinction,

sleepless nights go with the job.

At least Eulalia's managed to conceive.

In Atlanta, things are not so black and white.

Their giant panda Lun Lun is still playing the diva

and stubbornly refusing to come into season.

They're still waiting for that elusive 36 hour window

when she's receptive to mating.

Strictly between you and me,

I'm beginning to think it's just not going to happen this year.

But no-one's giving up around here,

especially Big Ken her long suffering keeper

who's still working tirelessly to keep her in peak condition.

We monitor all this on a daily basis.

We monitor her behaviour daily to see what she's doing differently.

She'll start acting differently. Walking differently.

Eating differently, doing everything differently.

The male will start acting differently, they'll start getting interested in one another

whereas the rest of the year they pretty much don't care about one another.

I guess it's also true that to have any chance of breeding,

you have to have a happy and healthy panda.

Yes, that's the biggest part of our job and the best thing that we can do for them.

'So how exactly is Ken managing to keep this furry diva happy?

'Flowers and chocs aren't going to cut the mustard,

'but Ken is very experienced in the mysterious ways of pandering to pandas

'and he's set aside a whole room devoted to pleasing her!'

-Wow!

-This is our bamboo cooler.

Where on earth do you get all this from?!

Well, the zoo has a team of bamboo cutters.

Luckily all sorts of bamboo grows well in Georgia's climate

so the public can ring in and donate it to the pampered pandas.

-And this, what we're looking at now.

-What does that say?

-Sorry, it says

20, almost exactly. This is enough for...?

-For this morning.

-This morning?

What we saw in the cooler is about half a day's worth.

That's an awful lot of bamboo!

Here it is breakfast.

So, Ken, if you didn't have the bamboo, you'd be in trouble.

-What would you do?

-With pandas, you'd be in a lot of trouble -

they don't tend to eat much of anything else.

If you feed them just biscuits or fruit,

their digestive tract goes quite awry really quickly.

'Lun Lun is strictly a salad girl, but as any dieter knows,

'it's not the most energy rich diet,

'so what it lacks in quality has to be made up for with quantity.

'Lun Lun eats a gut busting 10 kilos of bamboo every day.

'So it's a matter of eating till stuffed,

'take a nap and eat some more.

'How on earth did a bear end up living on bamboo?! Weird!

'But for Ken, all this eating provides yet another layer

'of detail for checking she is in peak condition.

'Ken is collecting Lun Lun's leftovers.'

8.62.

That's before we get onto the poo!

He's taking individual leaves out of their poo!

Nothing to it.

'The devil really is in the detail, and Ken leaves no stool unturned.

'Sorry! Couldn't resist it!'

-What do we do with the poo now?

-Weigh it.

-We're going to weigh the poo?

-Yeah. MORE detail!

How much?

It says 12.52 kilos,

so she ate about 10 kilos of bamboo overnight.

And you do this every day?

-Every day.

-Every day.

'We've done the poo, now for the wee because Ken needs to check her hormones.'

What we need to do is collect some urine from Lun Lun here

from overnight. As she gets closer,

we'll test it several times a day, so we can pinpoint the exact hour.

-Our urine freezer, we have a few samples in here collected.

-Oh, my goodness!

'A freezer full of panda pee?

'I'm starting to feel a bit sorry for Ken, because despite everything,

'all the effort, there's still no sign of Lun Lun becoming ready.

'Lun Lun kept me waiting for another five days,

'but eventually I just had to leave Ken to it.'

Panda breeding is clearly not for the fainthearted

or the easily bored, but Ken is not the type to give up.

And the refusal to give up is one of the things that unites

these amazing people in zoos and breeding centres around the world.

The ultimate dream for Ken in Atlanta,

Veronica at Whipsnade, and Dom in Jersey

is that one day the animals they care so passionately about

can go back to the wild, which is where they belong.

Back in Jersey, Dom's worst fears have been realised -

Eulalia has given birth to triplets but she's attacked her own babies.

Now the team are desperately trying to save them.

Keeper Gale was first on the scene

and managed to frighten Eulalia off,

but not before she'd inflicted some terrible damage to one of the little males.

Don't hold your breath, little monkey.

Now she has to call Dom and tell him the full horror of what has happened.

We got three babies, but only one dead, two survived at the moment.

But one very badly injured.

One baby was already on the floor that she'd attacked.

Another baby screaming on the floor.

The other one, she was biting on the platform,

so the second baby that she had in her mouth when I got there

she's bitten really deeply into its left wrist.

Juliette? Can you hear me? She's stopped, oh...

It's all right. Sorry, he just held his breath for a long time.

-That's all right. Is he breathing more regularly now?

-Yeah. He just stopped, sorry.

Can you grab the X-ray?

This tiny injured baby is now facing surgery on a badly bitten hand.

I can't completely assess the extent of the damage.

I think unfortunately only time will tell exactly how bad it is,

but it's definitely worth giving it a shot and seeing if we can save his hand.

Just minutes old and weighing only a few ounces,

this baby boy is now fighting for life. It's not a great start.

Surgery over and the little boy is reunited with his sister,

the only one of Eulalia's babies to escape unharmed.

But if they're going to survive, they'll need round-the-clock care and feeding.

Eulalia herself seems unphased by the havoc she's created.

But although she wants nothing more to do with her babies,

she still has an important part to play.

If the babies are to have the best possible chance of surviving, they need her milk.

The problem is Eulalia would attack them if she saw them, so there's only one thing for it.

The babies are safe in their incubator and Eulalia is now anaesthetised.

It's time for perhaps the most important meal of their lives.

Shall we get the little boy out?

He's super grippy. Let go.

He's still using that hand to hold mine.

She's got milk on both sides.

Good boy. Do you want me to put her on the other side?

There you go...

-She'd be angry if she knew!

-She'd be furious!

"You let them near me!"

The first milk that primates produce is known as colostrum,

a nutrient rich cocktail packed full of immunity-boosting antibodies

which is almost impossible to replicate.

Dom is relieved that at least this part

of the process has gone to plan.

Well done, little boy, and little girl.

I think it's time to wake your mum up.

Over the next few days, a round-the-clock feeding rota

is established for the twins.

And tonight, I'm going to see how Dom gets on with his first shift looking after the tiny tamarins.

It's seven o'clock, the zoo's been shut for ages,

but for Dom, the night's work has only just started.

-Hi, Dom. Brilliant.

-Hello!

First night with them.

With these two, yeah.

There's been many before these!

This little female, she's really rooting around now. She's really...

I can see, yes, she is.

"Give me some food now! Help."

So here we go, you've got one mil.

One mil, oh, God. Right specs on,

-this is serious stuff.

-Just put your thumb under her chin

and then just let her latch on, now you're in control, you see, now.

There you go, lovely.

With my kids, Dom, it was a long time ago,

but we just used to stuff it in until they stopped!

HE LAUGHS

Well, hopefully these guys in two weeks, three weeks' time

they'll be crazy like that.

Let's just let that go down a bit.

It's amazing the way they just grip on like this.

This is a really good sign you've got a strong baby.

I don't know how you can do that, Dom!

But it's got to hang on to Mum!

-You want to go through the jungle.

-At breakneck speed!

-You've seen them, haven't you?

-We've seen them doing it, yes.

They don't hang about. She's got to hang on.

And they are. If you try and take them off, they're like... ttccch.

But he's got this bad paw so he's just that little bit more...

Got to be a bit more careful with him.

So, Dom, these little ones won't be going back to the wild,

but hopefully their children or their children's children might one day go back to the rain forest.

They might well.

Let's hope there's still rainforest for them. That's what we're fighting for, like mad.

When you take on a difficult species,

you have to be there to help them every step of the way.

'Every time I meet Dom, I'm amazed by his dedication,

'his total commitment to trying to save

'this one species from extinction. Dom is one of the good guys.'

Now it's time to find out just how good the guys in Atlanta are.

They've had to endure an impossibly long wait,

but you know what, I should have kept the faith.

At last they have the news that everyone's been waiting for -

little diva Lun Lun has come into season.

So now they have their chance to create their own miracle baby.

But how? Well, living next door is Yang Yang, a male panda.

Like wild pandas, they live separate lives most of the year,

but all that changes when it's the mating season.

Yang Yang knows something is up, he can smell that Lun Lun is ready to conceive.

The team are hoping that if they put the two of them together,

they will do what should come naturally.

Yang Yang is waiting patiently for the girl of his dreams.

It's been over a year - he's full of hope and testosterone.

ROMANTIC MUSIC PLAYS

She's in the mood, he's in the mood, what can possibly go wrong?

Hmm, maybe having an audience is putting him off,

but it seems Yang Yang needs to work on his technique,

and Lun Lun is rapidly losing patience.

RECORD SCRATCHES

Nope! After a whole year of waiting,

poor old Yang Yang has blown it

and he's given his marching orders by a deeply unimpressed Lun Lun.

It's all rather humiliating and he makes a reluctant exit.

But in the wild,

Lun Lun would have made a choice between a number of different potential mates,

so perhaps it's not THAT surprising that it didn't work out with Yang Yang.

So nature's way didn't deliver,

but there is another way.

One last chance for Lun Lun.

The clock is ticking.

Now remember, Lun Lun is only fertile for 36 hours

and nearly half of that has been used up already.

It's time for a well rehearsed plan B,

and the carefully assembled team of experts swings into action.

But what exactly IS plan B?

AI, Artificial insemination

using Yang Yang's sperm.

Among the team are some Chinese scientists

from Chengdu Panda Breeding Centre.

They're here to lend their expertise and make sure nothing goes wrong.

Yang Yang's sperm is being examined to make sure it's of a high enough

quality for the hugely important job that it needs to do.

-It's good.

-It's good? Good for AI?

-Look in.

-For AI?

-Yes, you see.

It's show time for Lun Lun.

Everyone is hoping that they've got the timing exactly right.

Everything went really good, as well as can be expected.

Keep our fingers crossed!

Her ordeal over, Lun Lun heads back to her enclosure,

blissfully unaware that she's carrying the hopes

of a huge and dedicated team inside her.

So how will they know if they've succeeded?

There are no reliable tests for panda pregnancy.

The baby bulge will be too small to show through all that fur,

and to top it all, pandas have an unusual pregnancy

which can last anything from three to six months!

Looks like yet another agonising wait for Ken and the team

because they will only know they've got it right

if and when she produces the baby.

At Whipsnade, the atmosphere couldn't be more different.

After the relief of the successful birth, everyone is delighted

as a little chap makes his first foray into the outside world.

Everything's going really well at the moment, the calf's growing every day

probably putting on about one or two kilos a day.

Suckling well. Doing everything well.

We've actually managed to weigh him

and his weight was an incredible 83.9 kilos,

which is over 13 stone!

Which is massive, even as rhino calves go.

We've also given him a name, he's called Ajang,

which means enormous in Nepalese, which is very appropriate for him.

This is a massive event because there are so few of these animals.

There's only about 150 in captivity.

To have a new blood line and a new birth means..

..we are increasing the numbers in captivity

should anything happen to the wild population in the future.

With his mum at his side, Ajang goes from strength to strength.

But what about the two motherless baby tamarins in Jersey

rejected and attacked by their real mum?

Will the dedication of Dom, their human surrogate, be enough to secure their future?

It's 10 days since the tamarins were born so it's time to catch up and see how they're doing.

But it's also time to look into the future, to look forward,

what's going to happen to them?

They can't go back to their real mother because shockingly she'll probably kill them,

but they also can't stay with their human minders for too long because

they'll get confused and start to think they're little people!

So here's the problem -

how can these little babies turn into real tamarins?

Fortunately, Dom has a plan.

If these tiny orphans are going to make it, and eventually become part

'of a larger breeding group they have to find a way to integrate them.'

Just tiny!

'Dom has attached a separate small cage

'to the side of a larger group cage.'

The babies can spend most of the day here and they can hear,

and they can smell other tamarins,

They've started to talk to each other already, which is fantastic.

Enter prospective foster parents Elsa and Flash.

Dom's hoping that eventually these two experienced parents

will adopt the two tiny tamarins and raise them as their own.

Incredibly, Elsa only has one arm,

but she's managed to raise eight babies!

She's a brilliant mum.

Flash and Elsa have proven to be fantastic parents in the past

so they are the ideal foster parents.

It's important that they don't live a human life for the first few weeks.

They'd start to think they were little humans?

Yes, and we've taken away our care

so that'll give them the best possibility to be normal tamarins.

Dom and his team are keeping a very close eye on developments.

The twins are growing fast and getting more and more active.

In the wild, they'd still be clinging to Mum,

so they've actually become independent

much faster than normal tamarins.

Now Dom's decided the twins are ready to face a crucial milestone.

They've been interacting with their foster carers Flash and Elsa

through the wire of the cage for long enough.

Both sides seem very keen to get closer,

so it's time to let them meet, in the flesh.

So, this is the moment of truth.

I'm just going to gently open this door and probably nothing

will happen straight away, but we're all set ready to intervene.

There's a chance the adults will attack them, so Dom and Gale have their fingers crossed.

Interestingly it's foster dad Flash who's the first one in.

He immediately tries to reassure the babies that he means no harm.

The team are delighted.

-They want to play with him, but...

-Aw. Just touched the shoulder.

He's doing movements now - he wants them to climb on to him.

The kids are a bit worried because they don't want to be picked up.

This is, you know, absolutely fantastic.

A few minutes later and Elsa comes in.

She too seems relaxed and happy with the babies.

These brief visits will continue until Dom is confident that the babies are safe and happy.

It's now been almost a month since the fostering process began

and I'm back to see if the daily visits have been going well,

and it turns out Dom has a surprise for me.

The babies are now living with the adults full time,

a fantastic result for everyone.

It must have been an incredibly tense moment when you introduced the two little ones for the first time?

Totally.

It was very, very, very worrying.

It's a moment it could all be finished then,

all those hours could be gone in an instant.

-Cos they could've attacked them?

-Yeah. They could've acted the same as Eulalia.

We monitor it really closely and when we opened the door,

-Flash went in and it was fine, absolutely fine.

-Immediately?

Yeah, and he's been a fantastic foster dad

and we know that tamarins' default setting is to care for babies.

What are they called now? You've given them names.

They are called Marcella and Jefferson.

And they've got their own name tags now.

Marcella and Jefferson. Now I can't help noticing, Dom,

that they're a tiny bit scruffy!

Is that just the way that tamarin teenagers are, or...?

Not usually, these look like they've been dragged through a hedge,

but it's because we're hands off now,

we can't wash them like we did before, and the thing is they're not used

to being groomed by adult tamarins, so they're a bit waaargh!

If Elsa and Flash try to groom them, they're like,

"Don't touch me!"

What will the future now hold for these two,

for Jefferson and Marcella?

Hopefully they'll become fantastic parents, that's what we want them to be.

You know, we know the situation in the wild is not looking too great,

so we can't really start any sort of reintroduction programme yet.

So we want these animals to successfully breed

and be great rearing tamarins.

So, as far as the tamarins are concerned,

are you a happy man?

I'm very, very happy. This has been a perfect result, absolutely perfect.

These two tiny and rather tatty tamarins are proof of Dom's expertise.

Pied tamarins are still the most threatened primates in South America,

but Marcella and Jefferson are keeping hope alive.

Well, it's December

and it's been eight month since I was last here in Atlanta.

And back then, I was hoping against hope that our panda,

our female panda Lun Lun, would get pregnant.

But we waited and waited and waited, it just wasn't happening

and in the end the scientists, the vets, the keepers, all of us

had pretty much given up hope

that Lun Lun would have a baby this year.

Turned out we were all completely wrong!

True to form Lun Lun waited until she was good and ready

and on November the 3rd,

finally gave birth to an adorable little son!

After all his work, I have just one question for Big Ken.

Ken, I've got to ask you,

were you present at the moment of birth?

I was, sitting about five feet away from her while watching it all.

Right here?

Yeah, I was sitting right over here in this den adjacent to this one,

sitting on the scales.

When she goes through labour,

she gets up, she goes down,

but she usually has this one bleat sound that she makes

that we recognise when she's getting close.

PANDA BLEATS INTERMITTENTLY

Then we heard her make it, and she walked around the den and we knew something was close.

These guys gathered around the monitors and I was

sitting in there. I didn't move once I heard her

make the noise, then she stopped, and you started to see

the contractions begin and you knew it was coming.

PIERCING CRIES

The piercing cries from the baby reassure an anxious Ken

that it's alive and well.

Healthy panda baby, Mummy taking care of it.

Baby pandas are tiny -

just six inches long and around five ounces at birth.

And I suppose when the baby is born it's got to be kept warm.

It can't regulate its own body temperature, it doesn't have any hair,

so for about the first three weeks, she has to hold that baby tight at all times.

She can't put it down for more than a minute or else it's going to get hypothermia.

How long does she do that for?

-Three weeks to a month she's got to hold that baby constantly.

-She's doing it now.

She's just never letting that baby go.

For that first week,

she doesn't eat, she doesn't drink.

All her energy is spent taking care of that foetus.

Just taking care of the foetus, wow.

So is she being a good mum?

-She looks pretty awesome to me.

-She's a wonderful mum.

We didn't have any hard feelings at all. She just picked up the baby and started doing her thing

Dr Sam, do you actually... How can you actually check on the little one?

Do you do that yourself?

After Lun Lun starts leaving the cub by itself,

when she goes to eat, we can actually close the den door

and we can go in once a week, we get our hands on the cub.

It's an opportunity for the team to take a whole series of measurements,

including weight, growth rates, and so far so good.

You're just checking that the cub is thriving, is doing well the whole time?

-Once a week, you're just going to have that check?

-Yes.

A fantastic and very unexpected success story.

-Absolutely, absolutely!

-Fabulous.

When I came here eight months ago,

nothing had prepared me for the level of care,

expertise, patience and attention to detail that it would take

to create just one little panda.

He's a real-life million-dollar baby.

It's been a long, hard road,

but they now know almost exactly how to make little panda babies.

They worked out all the issues about artificial insemination

and they know almost to the hour

when a female panda's ready to conceive, and the little babies,

..they know how to help them thrive and survive.

And if a mother panda should give birth to twins,

they've even worked out how to make absolutely certain both of the twins

survive to adulthood.

And also, they make sure pandas have plenty of fun.

But there's one final question -

will this little panda, or maybe some of his babies,

ever go back to the wild?

And the honest answer is nobody knows.

That IS the ambition and it would be fantastic if it happened,

because panda habitat would also be home to thousands upon thousands

of other plants and animals.

But one thing I do know...

..if panda's went extinct in the wild and we hadn't worked out how to breed them in captivity,

then no-one would even be talking about returning pandas to the wild

because they wouldn't exist

and that surely would be a shame.

Lun Lun's baby boy, along with Ajang the Indian rhino

and the twin Pied Tamarins Marcella and Jefferson,

are just four additions to the modern day Ark being created around the world

to offer a beacon of hope in the battle to safeguard the future of our endangered wildlife.

Next time, I try to get a glimpse of the illusive Amur leopard,

the rarest big cat on Earth. Meeting three lonely gorillas

desperately seeking love,

and journeying back to the wild with some orphaned baby elephants.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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