Episode 3 Nature's Miracle Babies

All around the world,

an extraordinary group of people are on a mission

to save some of our most critically endangered animals.

SNARLING

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 and I trained as a zoologist

'but I've spent the last 30 years making wildlife films.'

You've eaten my microphone again.

'And over that time I've seen with my own eyes

'the challenges 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.

Australia.

It's the largest island in the world and it's got everything

from blistering deserts through to kind of cool, lush rainforests.

But it's also got its own very special wildlife -

strange, sometimes bizarre animals

that you find nowhere else in the world.

I'm going to be meeting some of the most fascinating

and, frankly, adorable babies

from five of the world's islands

and finding out about the unique challenges island life creates.

Any idea what this is?

Up until a few days ago, I wouldn't have had a clue.

It's actually a legendary animal.

This is a Tasmanian devil.

She's only five months old

and she is a happy, healthy Tasmanian devil.

But in the wild, the devils are facing a crisis

and it's not the usual things like habitat destruction and hunting

and invasive species.

No, the Tasmanian devil is facing something completely different.

This fierce, feisty creature has a fearsome reputation.

SNARLING

The island of Tasmania, just south of Australia,

is the only place on earth where you'll find these not terribly cuddly little beasts

-living in the wild.

-VICIOUS SNARLING

They only come out at night and they fight over every scrap of food.

They have a blood-curdling scream...

SCREECHING

..which explains the name.

Fighting each other is one thing

but in recent years, these little devils have also been fighting

a much, much more sinister foe,

a horrible and contagious form of cancer.

The poor little devils are literally fighting for their lives.

Luckily, they now have some human allies.

600 miles away from Tasmania, on mainland Australia,

keepers Liz and Brad are part of a committed team

determined to save them.

Liz, we're here in Australia but you've got Tasmanian devils.

Why? Why are they here?

Well, the devils in Tasmania are doing quite badly.

They're suffering from devil facial skin disease...

-SCREECHING

-Yeah.

..which is really spreading quite fast

and it's wiped out over 80% of devils down there.

-80%?

-Yeah, that's right.

What we're doing is building up an insurance population.

Should the Tasmanian devil get wiped out in Tasmania,

we will have a population large enough and diverse enough

to hopefully later reintroduce them to Tasmania.

-She's quite talkative, isn't she?

-She's full of character.

She likes to talk, especially when there's food around.

-I just want to stroke her.

-You do, yeah.

-But maybe I won't.

-But you hear her crunch that bone and go, "Oh, no."

'Successfully breeding healthy Tasmanian devils in captivity

'offers the wild population a crucial safety net.

'But as I've discovered time and time again on Miracle Babies,

'things rarely go according to plan.

'Liz is always ready to step in and help babies in trouble

'and Tassies, being marsupials, are reared in a pouch,

'so Liz has had to improvise.'

Why do you have two little babies you've got to hand-rear?

OK, so for whatever reason their mum seemed to be abandoning these two,

so we decided to pull the babies

and give them a little bit of a better chance.

They're going really, really well and it's a 24-hour job, this is.

-Is it?

-Yeah.

-They come home with you?

-They go home with me

and they have night feeds and they come out and play

and come to work with me and... Yeah.

-Come on, you.

-Hello.

-This is Scratch.

-Scratch. Hello, Scratch.

-Hello!

I'll bring his little toy over.

You can see how they think their pouch is really safe.

-They love their pouch.

-He just wants to get back in.

-He loves it.

-Shall I hold him?

-Yeah, if you can hold him there.

If their face is covered, they feel a lot more secure.

-Just like my chickens.

-That's right.

-Everything's like chickens.

-And this one is called Smeegle.

-Oh, oh, oh, oh.

-You got him?

-Yeah.

-He likes to get up into hair, so...

-Does he?

-Look out for that.

-That would be bad.

-It's hard to get him back out.

-Is it?

-Yeah.

-OK.

-Gosh, he's strong.

-Yeah, they're very strong.

Come on, you.

Right, OK, calm down.

Oh, he's got my hair now.

Ugh, ugh, ugh. That's great.

No, that's not so great.

Erm...

He's got you.

You've got him! Good grab, buddy.

Come on, darling.

-I love having long hair.

-Come on.

Thank you. Ah! Thank you very much.

-Ow!

-Hold him there for a second. Come on, Scratchy.

Let go. There we go.

OK.

Yummy.

Such a hard life, isn't it?

-He's got the hiccups.

-You have! Look, little shakes.

LAUGHTER

-Drank it too fast, did you, mate?

-Oh!

-OK, so do you want to have a little hold?

-Yeah.

There you go. Quite firm. Lovely.

So what does the future hold for these two little babies?

Once they wean, we'll begin socialising them with other devils,

so they still learn to behave like a normal devil behaves

and interact with other devils.

And then once they're big enough, they'll go into an enclosure.

-So once they're breeding age...

-They'll be part of the programme.

That's right, yeah.

For these two little devils the future looks bright

and, more importantly, healthy.

But I want to find out exactly how this evil disease is passed on.

Why has it spread so fast and what can they do to stop it?

I'm heading to Tasmania,

to meet the people who decided to fight the disease

on its home ground.

This is one of only two transmittable cancers.

It's very unusual and the race is on to try to stop it spreading.

'I'll be teaming up with the biologists and volunteers

'who are working in the heart of devil country.

'Team leader Stewart Huxtable was born and bred in Norfolk

'but he's taken Tasmania and its devils to his heart.'

So if and when we do catch a devil, what are you looking for?

I'm going to basically get a hold of that devil

and really carefully check it over and give it a health check.

We're looking for signs of devil facial tumour disease.

If we find one with symptoms,

we'll remove that from the population

and then it can't transmit this cancer on to any other devils.

-It's transmitted from one devil to another?

-Yes.

-Directly?

-Yeah.

-OK.

So you're going to try and take out the diseased ones,

if we find any,

and that should, hopefully, get it out of the population.

Yeah, leave us with a lot more healthy individuals in the population.

Devils are natural scavengers

and like nothing better than an old carcass.

Their brilliant sense of smell means there are usually several devils

competing for the same meal.

And true to form, they squabble continuously,

using those impressive jaws to bite each other.

Unfortunately, it's this biting

that transmits the disease between them.

We've got a load of traps that I'm going to help set,

so how do we tempt them in?

-Grab yourself a piece of bait from here.

-A piece of bait. Thank you.

-Take your pick.

-Oh, how delicious.

-It's a bit of fresh roadkill rabbit leg.

-Roadkill rabbit leg.

-Delicious.

-And you fancy a bit of marinade?

-Marinade? Are we going to do that?

-We could do.

-We've got a choice of fish oil, mutton bird oil...

-Yeah?

We've got some egg and we've got some stinky.

Stinky.

Nice. What is stinky?

-Why don't have a smell?

-I'd rather not, mate.

See if you can work out what it is. See if you can tell me what it is.

Oh...

Get in there.

It's a sort of fishy, kind of rotting, sort of...

-Oh!

-LAUGHTER

-OK.

-Now, if you want to plonk that bit of bait in there.

-Keep hold of the string.

-Keep hold of the string.

-I guess it needs to be pretty secure.

-Yeah.

-Shall I give it a try?

-Yeah, give it a pull.

Bingo. And the locking pin just stops it from opening up.

Great. Ready to roll.

The traps are all baited and overnight, we'll find out

just how irresistible my old stinky really is.

10,000 miles away, another iconic island native

is locked in a struggle for survival.

However, unlike the wild Tassies,

this little islander is an awfully long way from home.

It's gothic, bizarre, strange.

Such a strange creature, some people think it's bewitched.

But American vet Cathy Williams adores

the weird and wonderful aye-aye.

I think aye-ayes are fabulous. They're some of my favourite lemurs.

They're just amazing animals.

They look like they're scary - weird features and large ears

and long fingers -

but they're so smart and they're friendly

and they're curious and they're just fabulous animals.

What you see externally can be a little off-putting to some people

because they're a bit odd looking

but personality wise, they're just amazing animals.

Cathy oversees a breeding programme for aye-ayes

here in North Carolina

and each new baby is a precious lifeline

for a species classified as critically endangered in the wild.

Just two babies have been born here this year

and Cathy is very worried about one of them.

Named Sticks, she was born weighing only 65g,

that's the weight of one of my chickens' eggs,

half what she should weigh.

We realised after the first few hours

that this infant wasn't able to nurse properly.

I didn't know whether she wasn't nursing because she was cold

or whether she was too weak to nurse or exactly what the problem was.

She's very weak.

Yeah, it doesn't look good when she's...

If Sticks is to survive, she's got to start feeding and fast.

With the aye-aye's home on the island of Madagascar

being destroyed by human activity,

every little captive aye-aye is becoming increasingly important.

Because of their quirky looks and elusive nocturnal lifestyle,

aye-ayes have become part of Madagascan folklore.

They're feared and persecuted as the bringers of bad omens.

But in reality, they're completely harmless,

very shy and gentle little creatures.

They have developed some particularly specialised anatomy

to be able to get at larvae that are burrowing underneath tree bark

or in rotted logs.

They may look like a mishmash, but in reality,

it's an evolutionary masterpiece.

They have this very elongated third digit.

It's on a ball and socket joint, so it can go all the way around.

And they tap this extremely, extremely fast

and then the reverberations of the sound,

they can detect the differences in density

of the material that they're tapping on

and then the big ears come into play.

So the huge ears are an essential part of the design,

needed for the way they hunt.

They're not pinched off a bat and stuck on.

Interestingly, 100 years ago, people thought they were related to bats.

They're not.

Next, they have to get the larvae out

and this is where the long, razor-sharp and continuously growing

incisor teeth take over.

They make short work of chewing through the wood

to the tunnel beneath

and then that peculiar finger really comes into its own.

And gotcha!

Mm! Yummy.

But for Sticks, larva dinners are a long way off.

She needs mother's milk and she needs it fast.

We always try and get them to nurse on Mom within the first day or two

to get them some colostrum, that first milk that Mom produces,

that's high in antibodies - it's very protective for the infants.

To have the best chance of survival,

Sticks really does need that first feed.

There we go, girl.

She seems to like her pillow case.

She's so tiny. SQUEAKING

The plan at this time is that we will bring Mom out

and we're going to sedate her

and that's so that Mom's quiet while we put the infant on to nurse.

Right, sweet stuff, let's see how active you are

and how hungry you are.

We hope that she's strong enough and interested in latching on herself.

We're just making it easier for the baby to get on

and making sure she stays on.

Easier said than done. It doesn't look like she's staying on.

-Is she staying on?

-She's falling off!

-She just popped off.

-Let's see if she can do it herself.

-If she can, that would be ideal.

-There you go.

Did you do it? Yes, she did it herself.

Did she do it? All right!

Oh, wait, now she's off again. She's trying.

I actually needed to open up the infant's mouth

with my little finger

and literally put the nipple right in the mouth

and then there was some sucking reflex.

It was weaker than I wanted to see it,

meaning that that infant was not strong enough to initiate nursing

but once she got on the nipple, she could suckle to some extent.

All right.

Sticks is getting as much care as any baby could wish for.

She's fed every two hours, has regular check-ups

and a cosy incubator to keep her warm.

And she gets a regular cuddle with Mum,

so their bond remains strong.

It's still touch and go but she's got the whole team fighting for her.

In the wild, she'd be abandoned and she wouldn't stand a chance.

Aye-ayes aren't the only unique and endangered animals from Madagascar.

The island separated from the African mainland long ago

and its wildlife has evolved very differently.

Most of its creatures, and plants, come to that,

are found nowhere else on earth

and perhaps the most famous of its inhabitants are the lemurs.

There's a different lemur for each different nook and cranny

on the island.

But the aye-aye is the strangest lemur of them all.

And now, with the aye-aye's island home under severe threat,

captive breeding may be the only way to secure their future.

And that's why safety-net populations,

like the one at Duke Lemur Center, are so vital.

They're trying to make sure the aye-ayes don't become extinct.

It's been a month since little, sickly Sticks was born

and the change is miraculous.

Although Sticks is now living full time with her mum, Ozma,

Cathy still keeps a careful eye on her.

There's Ozma coming out of the nest.

Oh, my goodness, she's getting big.

Come on.

Let's get a weight on her and then I'll do a quick exam.

-She looks hefty.

-Yes, she does. Her head is so much bigger.

Hey, sweetheart. OK, let's see what you weigh.

All right, we're zeroed.

SQUEAKING She's even started making those little threat noises.

254g.

14g in one day. That's amazing!

You are doing so good.

She's very bright-eyed. She looks fantastic.

She isn't entirely out of the woods

but I would say it's right on the edge and she can see the daylight.

We'll keep monitoring her very, very closely.

Mom is doing everything now. She doesn't need our help any more.

She looks like she's developing the way a baby aye-aye should be.

But she's not going to win any beauty contests.

-It's just the beginning for her.

-I'm sure her mum loves her, though.

Sticks is going from strength to strength

and her future, at least in captivity, looks bright.

For the Tasmanian devils, it's a very different story.

Their island home may be reasonably secure

but protecting them from a contagious and devastating form of cancer

is a much tougher challenge.

A committed team, led by Stewart Huxtable,

are trying to remove sick devils from the wild

to stop the disease spreading.

I'm hoping the traps I helped to bait may have worked.

My first wild Tasmanian devil.

It can't be him.

'Every trapped devil is microchipped

'and this one's been caught before.'

061.

Oh, look. She's so calm.

I'm looking for any unusual lumps and bumps

or little signs of things going wrong here.

Have a look under...

'I was expecting trouble but the dark sack helps them stay calm.'

If I'm right, you've found no evidence of the disease. Is that right?

There's no symptoms. That doesn't mean that she hasn't got it.

It's unlikely but there's no symptoms.

So can you just tell us, how does the bite transfer the cancer?

They've got lots of really loose cells on them

and those cells are actually falling off the whole time

and they're floating around in the saliva in the mouth of the devil.

When that devil actually bites another devil

and those teeth puncture the skin and get in there,

they're actually injecting those cells into the next devil.

Those cells are growing in the next devil

and lodging in there and becoming a cancer.

And the devil that's been bitten,

its immune system is just not getting hold of those cells

and destroying them like it would, say, if I bit you.

Blood samples could offer clues to solve this medical mystery,

so each one is sent off for analysis.

It's time for me to hit the road again and follow the trail

to find out what the scientists are actually doing.

Many dedicated people are fighting for a future for the devil.

They're in it for the long term - people like Stewart

and scientist Dr Stephen Pyecroft.

Another first for me. I'm about to see an operation on a diseased devil.

They're taking a sample of tissue directly from a tumour.

Oh, love.

-Is she under?

-Yes, she's under.

So that's the tumour, there?

If you got those cells in you, could it be passed on to you, the cancer?

-I'd say it's highly unlikely.

-We're far enough away from the devils

-Yeah?

-..genetically that we should see that as foreign material,

like if you had a sliver in your finger.

-Your immune system would reject it.

-Yeah.

That's the conundrum with devils.

Why don't they see this foreign tissue from another devil?

-Why don't they see it?

-And reject it.

-And reject it.

-But they just don't.

-But they don't.

'Stephen dedicates his time and expertise to try to find answers

'but like human cancers, there are no easy solutions.'

-So those are the actual tumour cells that we're looking at?

-They are.

That's it.

Now, I know that you have tried chemotherapy on these cells.

-What happened?

-Not a lot.

We had some responses in the animals and some in the tumour

but not how you would say we have effected a cure.

It's not at that level.

And why might that be? What reasons could there be for that?

It may be that the tumour just doesn't respond to those commonly used chemicals

and we may not have had them at a high enough dose

but we've pushed the boundaries on that.

And it might be that the devils themselves are just tough little beggars

and they're clearing out the chemicals you're using.

Yeah, that's what I sort of meant.

We don't have an understanding about how they clear these sorts of things.

And do you think, looking very long term,

the work you're doing here, could it lead to any sort of treatment?

The reality is that we're working on it, we have resource to do it.

-While there's life, there's hope, so to speak.

-Yeah.

And the more we understand about this disease,

the greater impact we can have on it.

It's amazing to actually see it. That is it.

'There's no sign of a cure yet

'and the best they can do is remove diseased devils from the wild

'and that throws up some agonising dilemmas, as we're about to find out.

'But now it's on with our island hopping.

'We're heading for Mauritius, 6,000 miles away,

'to hear a remarkable success story

'which gives hope to anyone battling to save endangered species.

'Biologist Andrea Gear is part of a team

'which has brought the beautiful Mauritius kestrel

'back from the brink of extinction.'

CHIRRUPING

So this is what the Mauritius kestrel looks like

when it's about 24 days old.

A ball of fluff. Whoo! Look at that.

I can hear Mum and she's up there and she's got an agamid lizard.

She's going to go to feed the chicks and find they're not there.

That lovely fat, green agamid lizard that she had in her beak won't go to waste.

No doubt the dad will take it.

I think this little one heard Mum. You're missing breakfast, I'm afraid.

Such a beautiful little bird of prey.

It's almost unthinkable that it should become extinct

but 30 years ago, it looked like that was just about to happen.

Extinction seemed inevitable.

That was until Carl Jones arrived on the island.

Carl is a stubborn man in a very good way.

The Mauritius kestrel declined to just four birds in the wild

and by the time I came here, there was still only a handful of birds

and only two known pairs.

Disease wasn't killing these beautiful birds.

Ironically it was a chemical designed to save lives -

human lives.

Malaria was a big problem on Mauritius

and the best solution at the time was to spray DDT

and kill the mosquito, which was incredibly effective.

But then it became clear that DDT had a terrible effect on eggshells.

They became impossibly thin and fragile.

The chicks never hatched.

Kestrel numbers crashed.

Here was a bird that was doomed to extinction

unless somebody could actually manage to breed them in captivity.

So we climbed up to the nests of the last breeding pairs that we knew of

and we took the eggs.

Took the eggs? This was radical and a huge gamble.

Carl reasoned that taking the eggs and hand-rearing the chicks

would force the parents to lay more eggs.

Some people thought he was crazy but it worked

and numbers rose dramatically.

And from those few birds that we raised in captivity

we were able to establish a captive breeding programme

and eventually breed enough birds

that we could start reintroducing them back into the wild.

So I was sent out to Mauritius for one or two years.

31 years, I'm still here.

Can you imagine being responsible

for almost single-handedly saving an animal from extinction?

Personally, I can't imagine a greater lifetime achievement.

Respect to Carl.

And the work goes on because it has to.

The population wouldn't be self-sustaining

if we didn't help it out a little bit with the nest boxes.

We just make sure that the boxes are clean and stable

and then throughout the breeding season, we monitor the pairs

that we know have eggs, chicks,

and we keep an eye out for potential new nesting sites.

Ouch!

We started off with a handful of birds

and today we've got 500 birds.

We'd like to have more but at least it's a good start

and at least the Mauritius kestrel

isn't going to become extinct tomorrow.

Island life poses a unique set of problems for its inhabitants.

If your home isn't safe, only the help of remarkable people

will save you.

Later, we'll discover just how extreme that help can be

when an animal in danger has to be airlifted to safety.

And one of the world's favourite creatures requires a helping hand

to get it out of a sticky situation.

I'm back on the island of Tasmania with Stewart Huxtable,

busy trapping and removing diseased Tasmanian devils from the wild.

-We've got a Tasmanian devil.

-It's definitely a devil.

Big one.

Tasmanian devils, like most Australian mammals, are marsupial.

They carry their young in pouches

and the next devil we checked wasn't alone.

-She's got young?

-She's got pouch young, yeah.

-She's got young.

Oh, wow.

Look at that.

-We've got four.

-She's got four in there?

We've got a female, here.

-You can just see her pouch...

-Oh, yes.

-..developing there.

-And there's a boy.

-Yes.

You can see the sac next to my thumb there.

How amazing.

Another female.

And, yeah - two girls and two boys.

How old do you estimate these little ones are?

They probably would have been born a good couple of months ago.

-Really?

-Yeah.

How do the babies get into the pouch? How are they born?

OK, well, Mum will actually give birth

to probably anywhere between 15 and maybe even as much as 35 or 40

of these tiny, little grains of rice, little pink bald...

And she's only got four teats,

so it's the first four to latch onto those teats

are the ones which survive.

-So these are the lucky four that actually made it in the end.

-Yeah.

It's so different from the animals we're familiar with.

She's being ever so good. Really calm.

And the best thing is, she's also really healthy,

really good condition, so we can let her go

to continue to rear these young

and maybe next January, we'll be catching these four young

-out here when we're trapping.

-A great result.

Surprisingly, even if Mum was diseased, there's still hope.

The babies, also known as joeys, can't be infected while they're in the pouch.

The disease doesn't pass on through the milk

and if they're developed enough,

they can be fostered by volunteers like Lorraine Dewey.

How did it all start? How did you get involved like this?

Oh, gosh. Well, I guess, I was brought up on a farm.

-I think that helps...

-Yes.

-..being around animals all the time

and then it went on from there.

-It's over 30 years since I started.

-30 years?

-I started...

-Blimey.

-Yes.

64-year-old grandmother Lorraine is currently mum to three joeys.

-I've got Arthur.

-Yes.

-Or Arthur's got me, more like.

What are the names of the other two?

-This one's Elsie.

-Elsie.

-Yes.

They have little different markings. She has a little marking on her tail.

-So I know that's Elsie.

-Right.

-Yes. BARKING

-Oh, chatty.

-Yes.

And this little one's Mildred. She's got her little patches, too.

-How did they come in to you?

-Their mums had facial tumour.

These are the offspring.

MARTIN LAUGHS

They're such tough little feisty things.

Yeah, yeah, yeah!

So much hard work. Why do you do it, Lorraine?

-Er, it's a passion.

-Uh-huh.

And I'm just happy doing what I do.

At the end of the day, you get that reward of being able to release these animals.

Your hard work, you don't think about it when you can put these animals back into the wild.

Vet Colette Harmsen, who I met back up in the lab,

is here to give the babies a health check and microchip them.

-Hi, Lorraine.

-Hello.

-Hi, Colette.

-Have you come to do this microchipping?

-Yes.

-OK, right.

-You're being bitten, there.

-Yeah, but in a good way.

-So what have you come to do today?

-I'm going to microchip these guys

as a form of identification for when they're either released

or put in for captive breeding.

You'll always know who he is for the whole of the rest of his life.

-It's a unique number.

-Right.

Oh, well done.

-No squeaking? Is it in?

-He's grunting a bit.

-I'm just holding the tissue closed to help it close over.

-Right.

And now do you have to check that it's actually there?

MACHINE BLEEPS

-OK. I'll check that number.

-Nice.

Yep. So he's now chipped.

Chipped for the rest of his life and he didn't hardly notice it.

I was expecting him to cry. He just grunted. He's a boy.

-Now, you've chipped yourself.

-Oh, yes.

Why have you chipped yourself?

Well, sometimes these things don't seem to work very well,

-so you can just...

-BLEEPING

-Yeah, the machine's working.

-That is beyond the call of duty!

I am discovering that Australian vets are different from UK vets.

Really? I haven't met a lot of UK vets.

-They're not like you.

-No?

These joeys now stand a good chance of getting back to the wild

and with luck, they'll be parents themselves

but it's still a huge gamble.

There's absolutely no guarantee that once free, they won't get infected.

All Lorraine and Colette can do is to keep on fighting

and save as many babies as possible.

Mainland Australia may be the largest island in the world

but its population is still relatively tiny.

Plenty of room for us all, you might think,

but for the most iconic of all Australians, the koala,

even that small number of humans is threatening their very existence.

Two baby koalas in Queensland are an example of the danger

we humans pose.

Vet Michael Pine at Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary

sees victims like these almost daily.

All right, buddy. Let's have a quick listen to you.

Your friend's trying to jump out, isn't he?

-There we go.

-He's about 1.4 kilos.

Good lad.

These babies were found beside the road

and it looks like their mothers were hit by cars

but their luck changed.

They were found and taken in by a foster mum,

who nursed them back to health.

Eventually, they'll go back to the wild.

Big long nose and googly eyes, aren't you?

Koalas are listed as threatened in this area

but they should be making it onto the endangered list.

Their numbers are dropping at such a rapid rate

that it's inevitable that they are going to go extinct

in this part of Australia in the not too distant future.

We're talking five to ten years before they're gone,

so if we don't do anything now it's all over,

which is tragic for such an amazing animal.

But it's not just bumps and bruises that are fixed here at Currumbin.

They've pioneered an important breeding initiative.

Michael's colleagues at Dreamworld theme park

have made the study of marsupials their life's work

and they're hoping to improve the chances of koalas

by perfecting artificial insemination.

It's a hi-tech procedure but the starting point is anything but,

as Michelle Burridge and Dr Steve Johnston are about to demonstrate.

What we're going to start to do today is do teasing with our females.

I guess a tease in better terminology is oestrus detection.

We can use a male to find out which one of our females is cycling

and what day of the cycle she's on.

Meet the George Clooney of the koala world.

He's being used to, well, turn the girls on.

If they react positively, they're ready to mate.

Not a bad job, being introduced to lovelies all day.

To start we let the girls all know he's here.

He's not always welcome.

-She's really quite aggressive, there.

-She'll swipe him.

She's letting him know that he's not welcome here.

-There you go.

-All right.

So we might move on to another enclosure.

We've got no activity in here whatsoever.

Dear, dear. That's a bad knock-back. Poor chap.

I think you need a thick skin to be a teaser.

All right, so we've got Jenna coming to us.

She's very excited there's a boy in her midst.

She's on heat.

So we can see that very typical hiccupping, ear flicking.

She's not holding back. She's almost willing him to come over.

Nice on, mate. She's hot and you've pulled.

Now, this is where things get complicated.

Jenna is actually going to be artificially inseminated

because the male she had the hots for is not a good genetic match.

But Rocky is.

His semen is about to be collected using an artificial vagina.

He'll think he's mating with a female,

so all's well as far as he's concerned.

We're going to have a go at collecting some semen from the boy.

This is the female that we're going to use as a teaser.

And off and running. Beautiful. OK, he's excited.

The team are highly skilled in this very delicate manoeuvre.

I know what you're thinking - why not just let nature take its course?

They want to be sure that Jenna gets pregnant

and they'll also have some sperm left over to use in experiments.

-OK, so that's it.

-That's it.

And that's the sample.

-We'll have a look under the microscope and see how we go.

-OK.

Well done, big fella. Well done.

We'll go and get him back to bed.

The semen looks fine, so Steve's planning to go ahead with the operation.

We're doing artificial insemination today

but we're also doing a lot more research

looking at techniques for the cryo-preservation of the sperm,

so that we can freeze it, thaw it out and then inseminate it.

Fresh sperm only has a shelf life of about 72 hours.

The long-term aim is to build up a genetically diverse sperm bank,

only possible if the specimens can be frozen.

It's turning out to be a real problem.

We've done quite a bit of work on koalas and wombats

and we can freeze it OK and thaw it OK

but we can't keep it alive after we've thawed it out.

So for now, they can only use fresh.

Jenna arrives at the clinic.

Steve makes this look simple

but it's taken him a long time to get this good.

It probably is about ten years

before you're proficient enough to do it reliably.

We'd like to use this technique for other species as well

but some of those species, unfortunately, don't have ten years.

Time will tell if it's worked for Jenna

but even if she's not pregnant,

she's done her bit to help the research.

One more step along the road

to saving her wild cousins from extinction.

And I just can't imagine Australia without its koala.

Or come to that, Tasmania without its devil.

But the cancer is spreading like wildfire.

Stewart is trapping and removing any diseased devils.

Another trap's been tripped.

About 40 traps are checked every day.

It's er... 7.3.

'So far, all the devils have been healthy

'and, naturally, quite keen to get away.'

Nicky, you're lifting it. 5.9.

Has she got bad breath?

You would if you ate what she did.

'Perhaps she'd had my stinky.'

'Healthy devils are good news but removing the diseased animals

'is the only way of keeping the healthy ones healthy

'and stopping the spread of the cancer.

'And this is not looking good.'

Yeah, look, that's definitely DFTD we've got here.

Oh, no.

We're looking at about six or seven just around her face

and she may well have tumours that have spread elsewhere in her body,

so I'm going to continue to check to see how bad the infection is.

She's got four pouch young.

Oh, no.

So it's quite important that we get this information

about the development of these pouch young.

What the vet will be able to do is have a look

-at how far developed the pouch young are...

-Mm-hm.

how advanced the disease is,

and if we think that she's got a chance of being able to rear these young

until they're old enough and developed enough

that they've got a chance to survive. we may take her into captivity.

That means we can rear those and get them back out here

into the population.

Only vet Colette can make that decision.

The older the joeys are, the better their chances with a carer

but if Mum's too ill, the cancer will have claimed not one

but five more victims.

All the vulnerable creatures we've seen so far live on islands

and all have problems calling for very different solutions.

An audacious air rescue from Montserrat in the Caribbean

was perhaps the most dramatic.

Intrepid Spanish scientist Gerardo Garcia leapt into action

when he discovered an animal he loved faced extinction.

There was no time to lose.

The animal they're trying to snatch from the jaws of death is this.

The mountain chicken.

Actually, it's a frog.

It was thought to be indestructible until disaster struck.

It's a frying-pan sized amphibian

that the locals say tastes like - yeah, you've guessed it -

chicken.

Not many people outside of the Caribbean know about mountain chickens

but Gerardo is an expert.

For the last few years he's looked after a small population at Jersey Zoo.

They're part of the food chain

and it's another species that is unique

that we have in the Caribbean, we don't find anywhere else.

For a long time, amphibian experts, including Gerardo,

thought that Montserrat's isolation would protect the mountain chicken

from a highly infectious fungal disease

that's decimating frog populations all over the world.

-Have a look underneath.

-I can see it.

-There's two.

-There's two under there.

-Yeah but one has it on the face.

-Which one?

Here we are.

'But they were wrong. The chytrid fungus was sweeping across the island.'

Looks good. FROG SQUEAKS

'On the ground, they found the situation was critical.

'There were less than 100 healthy frogs left alive.'

When he's being handled, you can see...

'Frog skin is special. Water and oxygen can pass through it easily.

'In effect, a frog can breathe through its skin.

'The fungus spreads over the skin and effectively suffocates the frog.

'If nothing was done, Gerardo knew the mountain chicken was finished.

'The team had to act fast.

'They to evacuate as many of the adults as they possibly could

'and take them to safety.

'Healthy ones were disinfected on site to prevent cross-infection.

'Then they were safely bagged up and rushed to the airport.

'This was the biggest and possibly the only frog airlift in history.

'50 were rescued

'and 12 of those went home with Gerardo to Jersey Zoo.'

At the moment, the situation is vital.

Every single frog that we have of this species in captivity has a vital role.

These animals are all the hope that we have now for this species.

'That's a heck of a responsibility

'and just keeping them alive wasn't going to be enough.

'To make sure of a future, Gerardo had to breed them.

'At the start of all captive breeding,

'you've got to get to know exactly what your animals need

'and these Caribbean exiles were extremely fussy breeders.'

In the wild they breed under the ground,

you know, in between rocks, under the logs.

What we do here is just provide a natural material,

which is just basic clay.

'Then after breeding,

'Gerardo had to work out how to keep the newborns alive.

'At home in Montserrat, the frogs use hollowed out logs as burrows

'and the female produces a foam pillow

'and lays her eggs in it.

'That they knew but there's another problem.

'These newborns are incredibly picky eaters.'

The tadpole feeds exclusively with infertile eggs. Nothing else.

So that is an exclusive adaptive behaviour or feeding strategy.

'Extraordinarily, nobody knew how this worked.

'It was a total mystery.

'Until one day, Gerardo lifted the lid on a nest at just the right moment.'

It was something amazing, something really privileged.

It turns out that the female produces unfertilised eggs

and the tadpoles climb up and eat them.

This behaviour and these weird images have never been seen before.

It's a TV first, folks.

There we were, witnessing that behaviour

and it's something that you really wanted to share with everybody

but you can't even speak loud - just don't disturb -

so I was like half an hour, waiting with the lid until everything finish,

so that's when you close the lid.

I was like, wow. Amazing.

Now, one or two of the tadpoles will miss out in this feeding frenzy

and those that don't feed now don't stand a chance.

But such is Gerardo's dedication to this frog

that he's pioneered a tadpole fostering service.

No, seriously - he has.

He's not going to give up on even one of his babies.

We had to remove this tadpole from the nest

because the female is not feeding the tadpole any more.

The rest of the froglets, they already develop.

For the female, the business is finished

but there's one tadpole that is still behind and pretty weak.

So what we try to do now is introduce in another nest

where the female is still active and see if she adopt it.

Gerardo's mixing up a harmless fluorescent dye,

so that the tadpole will always be identifiable.

This is going to be a small injection under the skin,

very superficial,

because it's very important that we can see the colour

without capturing the animal again.

Very quick, just a few seconds.

So that is the area that has been injected with the fluorescent red colour.

OK.

OK.

Now the baby needs to meet its foster mum.

Let's hope she likes pink.

So tomorrow, if the female has been fed, we should expect infertile eggs inside the nest.

A bad start for our orphan tadpole but the rest are doing really well.

There's no cure for the fungus

but scientists are hopeful that some frogs may develop an immunity.

That's why Gerardo can now make plans to send some of them home.

This is the first generation of frogs

that we expect to release in a few months' time to Montserrat.

Some of those frogs will be descendants

of those 50 original, airlifted evacuees.

And guess who's going back to Montserrat?

Against all the odds, in the advance party

is a special frog, Pinky, the sickly tadpole,

the one Gerardo wouldn't give up on.

Now fully grown and healthy, he's about to head back to the Caribbean.

Managing a disease sweeping through a species

sometimes demands horribly difficult decisions

and back in Tasmania, the fate of an entire family

hangs in the balance.

Earlier, I was with Stewart Huxtable

when he found a diseased Tasmanian devil

and worse still, she was carrying four healthy babies.

Vet Colette Harmsen has a dreadful decision to make.

Can she operate and keep the mother alive

or has the disease gone too far?

There's a few on the lower left-hand side.

Colette, are you just going to examine her bit by bit?

Yeah. I'm looking at each of the tumours

to see whether or not there's a possibility of cutting them off

and stall the disease from progressing for a few months.

-Then her joeys might have a chance.

-OK.

But erm...

Oh, there's one there, too.

She's riddled with them.

Some of them could come off.

What I might do is have a look at her pouch,

if that's all right with you.

I'll just see what size the babies are.

Yeah, I can see them. They need a good few more months.

Before they could survive out of the pouch?

Yeah, with a carer. I mean, ideally, she'd need...

To survive in the wild, she'd need at least six months

but if we kept her in captivity,

we could take them off at a younger age

-and then carers...

-Can look after them.

-..can look after them, yeah.

OK.

We've tried with mums before with various ages of joeys

and certainly the pinkies have a far smaller chance

of getting far enough advanced

and we might just be putting her and the joeys through too much trauma

if we try from this early age.

So I think the best thing to do is to put her to sleep

and the joeys.

That's very, very distressing for everyone

but there are some positives.

I mean, the first is that she's not going to die a horrible, slow death

out in the wild and that is what would happen to her

and the joeys as well.

And the second thing is

that she's not going to infect any other Tasmanian devils,

so there are pluses.

'It's clearer than ever that the devils' future is going to rely heavily on captive breeding,

'so I'm off on my travels again.'

Well, I've left Tasmania and we're back on mainland Australia,

because it's here on the mainland that perhaps its best hope lies.

I'm catching up with devil keepers Liz and Brad.

They're hoping for some new additions to their captive population

and healthy babies are just what the Tasmanian devils need.

I've been invited backstage to an area visitors never normally go.

So this is an off... The public don't go in here?

This is our main breeding facility,

-so all the breeding devils are kept off display.

-Right.

It's a little bit quieter and they don't have too much interaction.

-Wow.

-It's quite nice, isn't it?

-This is lots and lots.

-So they're all Tasmanian devils in here?

-It's devoted to devils.

-Wow.

'Liz and Brad stay as hands-off as possible

'and while they think they've got a nursing mum,

'they don't know exactly how many babies there are.'

-So this will be the first time you find out?

-Yeah, that's right.

-So we always get a little bit nervous.

-The pressure is on.

-That's right.

-She could have up to four.

-Up to four.

-We hope.

-Yes.

-Let's go.

-We've got to get in over the fence.

-I thought you'd say that.

All-righty.

-Watch the water.

-There's a water trap, there.

When you jump over, there's a big pool of water. Be careful.

If the devil does run out, stand still.

Don't move and she'll run straight past.

-If you move your leg to get out of the way, she'll bite you on the ankle.

-How nice.

Good tip, folks.

-Natural shovel.

-You're cheating with a shovel.

(Oh, there she is.)

Come on, then, girl.

-Isn't she little?

-She's small. Little Lady's small.

She's fierce, though.

-Oh, she's got them.

-Fantastic.

-How many's that?

-She's got four.

-Look at that.

-Beautiful. A full pouch.

-Wow.

-OK, so we've got one little girl...

Hungry little girl.

..one little boy...

..another little girl and another little girl.

-Three girls.

-Three girls and one boy and they all look fantastic.

Their coat is in really good condition

and the condition in themselves is very good.

They're hungry, aren't they? So they just stay on the teats all the time?

-Yep.

-And they're just clinging onto her. She's very good.

-Do we put her straight back in now?

-We'll put her in. Sorry, girl.

-Look at that!

-She's right there.

-She's right there.

-That is excellent.

-That's about as good as it gets.

-That's it.

That gives us 5:10, so five males and ten females.

-Which is fantastic.

-So you've got 15 babies this year in total?

-That's right.

-Congratulations.

-Thank you.

-That's a fantastic result.

Proof, if proof were needed, that captive breeding can work.

And as I've discovered in this series, it's becoming more important than ever

in the struggle to try to save some of the rarest creatures we have

here on planet earth.

Breeding is only the first step towards the ultimate dream

of all this work - reintroduction to the wild.

That may look hard right now

but as every one of the extraordinary people we've met would say,

never give up, never lose hope.

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