Episode 1 Animal Park

It's beginning.

Hundreds of people are busy preparing the estate...

For a new season full of challenges and adventures.

LIONS GROWL

Over one million people are on their way to see the ferocious...

LIONS SNARL

And the friendly creatures that make up the collection. Here you go.

We're back this spring to show you exactly what it takes to look

after over 1,000 different exotic creatures.

From the excitement of each new arrival to every joyous birth,

and of course tragedy.

-So, please, join him...

-And her, as we catch up with some old

friends and meet some new ones this Easter.

We're going to invite you back to...

-BOTH:

-Animal Park.

We've been at the park to capture extraordinary moments, as the

seasons change and the park springs into action after a long winter.

Coming up today...

The park's lazy lions go bonkers for some boxes.

Someone's got stuck right into their box there.

We catch up with our old friend, Anne the elephant,

and the animal osteopath who is determined to help her.

It looks easy, but she's pushing quite a lot of weight against me.

And tragedy hits the penguin colony, as a killer infection strikes.

They've hatched these birds out of eggs

and they're dying in their arms.

It's now over 50 years since the safari park opened,

with the original aim of making enough money to keep this old

house from descending into rack and ruin.

Over that time, they've bred and kept just about every animal

imaginable, from tigers to leopards,

chimpanzees, and you remember the elephants?

I do remember the elephants.

Then there was the buffalo, even baboons.

But in that time,

there's one creature they've never bred until now.

Five years ago,

cheetah arrived at the park for the first time in years.

They settled in well, and last year we found out just how

impressive the world's fastest land mammal really is.

Go, go, go, go, go!

Go for it!

Woohoo! Look at them go!

That was amazing. They both ran for it straight away.

That was so good. So, so good.

But the big hope was that these incredible animals would breed,

because cheetah are highly endangered.

Sadly, the keepers had seen no evidence of them mating.

Then, one morning last September, Wilma had

a surprise for her keeper Laura.

I went up to the house to do my morning checks, as usual.

As soon as I opened the door,

Wilma came straight over and I just saw them on the floor behind,

so I shut the door and radioed senior people,

and was just like, "There's babies! Oh, my God!"

Wilma had given birth to three cubs,

two boys and a girl.

It's the mother's job to raise the cubs, so father Carl

was kept separate.

Team leader Amy installed cameras to keep an eye on them.

-Aw, how cute are they?

-They're so adorable.

I just love them. Just love them.

It's great that we've finally managed to get them breeding,

even though we didn't know they'd... she'd got pregnant.

Yeah, very sneaky.

But there was a serious side to monitoring the footage, too.

90% of cheetah cubs die within the first three months.

In the wild, over half are lost to predators

such as jackals and lions, but there and here in captivity,

the pool of available bloodlines is so small that cheetah have

very weak immune systems.

The slightest infection can be fatal.

Before they were even a week old,

it was clear one of the little boys was failing to thrive.

Unfortunately, after a couple of days,

we realised that one of them was very weak and wasn't suckling,

and hadn't actually eaten anything at all.

Intervening at this early stage could cause Wilma to abandon

the other cubs altogether.

All the keepers could do was hope that

he would start to feed by himself.

It's very much touch and go, and until they're a month old,

we don't know whether they're going to survive or not.

The team knew the death rates were high, and sadly, in this case,

they were proved to be true.

We came in one morning and unfortunately

he had passed away overnight.

It has been stressful every single day, because, you know, it's

always a worry that they might not make it past day one,

day two, and you don't know what could happen, you have

no idea what could happen, so I'm always worried about them, but...

-Just taking each day...

-As it comes.

-..day by day.

But would those shocking odds claim another young life?

As the days slowly passed and became a week and then a fortnight,

thankfully the two remaining cubs continued to thrive.

They became known as Poppy and Winston.

Mum Wilma was instinctively doing all the right things -

feeding, bonding and nurturing her little ones.

She's just taken it on board so quickly and so well,

and she's an incredible mum, for a first-time mum, so incredible.

This is the dream. This is what I live for every day,

and to know that she feels safe enough and trusts us enough

that she thinks this is a safe place for her to bring up babies is

amazing, it is so rewarding to know that we're doing a good job.

Now a month old, the keepers could finally take

a breath and enjoy these special new arrivals.

Easter is here, and the park is bursting into life.

Today, as well as introducing you to the latest arrivals,

we'll also be catching up with babies from last year.

-Look.

-There we go.

-I've fallen in love.

Kate's beginning down on the lake.

Last summer when I was here,

I timed my visit to Half Mile Lake absolutely perfectly,

because there had been a new sea lion pup born just days before,

so I'm out on the boat, on Half Mile Lake, with Amy,

-to catch up on that little one...

-Hi.

-..who you called Roo, I gather.

-Roo, yeah. Baby Roo.

-Baby Roo.

-Baby Roo.

-Why Roo?

-She was a bit of a rascal for the keepers...

-Right.

..and she does like to bounce around quite a lot,

-up on the sea lion beach over there.

-KATE LAUGHS

-Is that her there?

-Yeah.

-Oh, my goodness, look at her!

-She's looking lovely and plump and...

-Yeah. Oh, very.

..and very well. So Mum has obviously done a great job.

Yeah, Mum's done a brilliant job with feeding,

and she has Auntie Nancy who does a lot of baby-sitting for her.

Oh, does she? Oh, is that Dad there? SEA LION BARKS

-That's Daddy, that's Buster, yeah.

-Big Buster.

-Proud Buster.

Oh, it's fantastic to see them. Are you doing a little bit of feeding?

-I am doing a bit of feeding.

-OK.

-Can I give you a hand? I love doing this.

-Yeah.

-So, just literally just chuck one out?

-Yeah.

Smelly sprats, just chuck them out, and hopefully...

-Here we are.

-..it should prise them down.

-Hoo-hoo!

-There we go.

-Here they come.

SEA LIONS BARK All right then, there you go.

Now Roo, at the moment, is not showing any interest at all, is she?

She is a baby, so she's very dependent on milk and sleep at the

-moment...

-Yeah.

-..but hopefully this time next year

-she will be over here with these guys.

-SEA LIONS BELLOW

I mean, presumably that's where the relationship with her mum comes

in, because her mum will kind of show her the ropes, will she?

Yeah, and because obviously her mum comes to feed from the boat,

-she will trust that that is a safe thing to do...

-Yeah.

..and she will follow in her mum's footsteps.

-And her greedy dad's.

-THEY LAUGH

Here you are.

In the eight months since I first met baby Roo,

she has doubled in body weight.

The rate of change in cheetah territory has been even greater.

Cheetahs are the fastest-growing of all cats,

and by two months these two are already the size of a small dog.

They are still feeding from Mum,

but they're starting to pay more interest in what she's doing,

so they're...When she's eating off of the floor,

they'll lick what she's been licking, they'll eat off the bone.

They won't eat too much,

but they are starting to pay more interest in it.

Their personalities are starting to develop,

and Laura thinks young Winston is the one to watch.

He's the naughtier one of the... of both of them, really.

He's quite cheeky, and he's already starting to...

he's already starting to show that, he's trying to steal from Mum,

as you can see.

But she's really, really patient with him,

which is really good. She is letting him steal a little bit.

Poppy is generally the more cautious of the two, but it looks like

today she is taking her first big step to becoming a true carnivore.

This is the first time she's actually started to take the meat as

well, which is really cool.

She's obviously been watching the whole time,

and has now just got brave enough to go and see.

Shockingly, in the last 100 years,

the worldwide population of cheetah has dropped by 90%.

The parents are both part of an international breeding

programme, and were brought to the park from a special conservation

project in South Africa, making our cubs extremely special.

The keepers at the park must do everything they can to

protect Poppy and Winston.

Which is why, just like domestic cats,

they too must have inoculations before they can go outside.

Lead keeper Caleb and the vet team have assembled at the

cheetah house.

The plan is to move mum across so she's a pen away from them,

because obviously we don't want her to not be within sight of them,

because they might, you know, panic a little bit,

so we'll move mum across as calmly as possible,

try and catch them, but as you can imagine,

even at eight weeks old, these cheetah cubs are extremely

fast and extremely capable of doing some damage.

You're all right, sweetheart. Good girl. Well done.

With Wilma safely in the next pen,

it's time to try and get hold of the cubs.

WILMA GROWLS

(Hello, little ones.)

All right, little ones. It's all right, it's all right.

Fence it in with the brush.

CUB SQUEALS

-You all right? you got it?

-Semi-got it, yeah.

Winston is first.

Holding him tightly by the scruff of the neck as his mother would is the

best way to control him, but also to keep him as calm as possible.

WILMA GROWLS

Just push it down.

All right, all right. All right, good little boy.

All right, all right.

CUB SNARLS

Now it's Poppy's turn, the supposedly quieter twin.

It's incredibly strong. You can sort of feel its power.

CUB CONTINUES TO GROWL

It's all right, all right.

All done, the cubs are quickly reunited with Mum.

As soon as they've gone back in with Mum and they realise that Mum

was there to protect them, they're completely calm again.

They're almost going back to sleep in the back corner there now, so...

Yeah, they're all fine now.

And we'll be back as Poppy and Winston begin to explore

the great outdoors.

Joining Kate and I again this Easter is Jean Johansson.

She'll continue to help the keepers find new ways to keep the

animals at the park busy and well-fed.

Her first appointment is with a mob of nosy meerkats.

Looking after the meerkats can be a real challenge.

They're fast and determined, which means getting them to spend

time hunting for their food can be over as soon as it's begun.

So today we're going to try something to try and make

feeding time last a little bit longer.

-Kat, what's the plan?

-I've actually got an ostrich egg here.

Why have you got an ostrich egg?

By giving them an ostrich egg, it'll hopefully make them work

a little bit harder,

-so we've actually drilled some holes into this one.

-Mm-hmm.

Oh, yeah, there's some mealworms in here.

So we've got some mealworms in there already,

I've got some more if you fancy kind of putting some in for me.

-OK, we'll put some more in here.

-Yeah, just one or two.

-Yeah.

So we want the food to be spread out more evenly, rather than

-just for one, and you're hoping that this egg is going to do the trick.

-Hopefully.

-So what should we do? Place it down here?

-Yeah.

-OK.

-Let's place it down for them.

-Let's try and lure them out.

Will I...well, you give them your special call,

-I know you've got a special call.

-I do indeed, yeah.

..and I'll sprinkle round some mealworms.

SHE WHISTLES

You can see our little ones coming over now.

There's something nice in there. There's something nice in here.

Oh, he's having a good go at that.

We're really seen him working with that egg.

His nose is going in the hole,

so he can sense that there's a treat in there.

You can see that already the little ones are kind of sussing

-things out and sticking their...

-They're starting to get used...

Sticking their noses, to know that the smell is there.

They're actually really, really good diggers,

so with the egg being rolled around they'll be able to put their

little claws in and hopefully pull out the mealworms.

So it's really working. It's a great enrichment for them.

They're very curious,

I can see little noses going in all the holes there.

Naturally, meerkats would probably come across lots of eggs in

the wild, so it's really nice to be able to mimic what they would

naturally come across.

Not often they would find an ostrich egg, that they wouldn't get.

It's really everything we wanted to see from this exercise,

and if they've got something like this to work with,

naturally feeding and hunting for food will take a little bit longer.

Indeed, yeah, and that's exactly the result that we wanted,

so it has...yeah, it's been awesome.

Over 100 staff come to work each day to help care for over 1,000 animals.

It's their job to work out what's needed to help them live

a long, happy life, no matter how big the task in hand.

Last year, we told you the painful but thankfully now

heart-warming story of Anne, Britain's last circus elephant,

who came here for retirement, free from cruelty.

Since then, the keepers have remained committed to her

rehabilitation,

and she's continued to surprise everyone with her progress.

But it hasn't been easy.

Now in her 60s, Anne is one of Europe's oldest elephants.

She had spent most of her life in the circus,

leaving her traumatised and mistreated.

She could barely lift her trunk.

In 2011, she arrived at Longleat under police escort and soon

moved into her own purpose-built retirement home,

complete with large grass paddock, sandpit,

pool, and most importantly a team of keepers dedicated just to her.

They have worked tirelessly to improve her body and mind.

It's beginning to pay off.

She now has full use of her trunk

and even seeks interaction with her keepers.

Have a good night. He'll get you tomorrow.

But as the years march on,

there's a serious yet familiar condition they must help her with.

Well, with Anne's age,

the specific problems that we've got with her as an individual are

her back legs, she is arthritic, we're aware of that.

You cannot just get rid of arthritis, it's one of these things

you've got to live with, but also you need to exercise as well.

You need to get some movement in there.

And Anne being Anne, she...

If she can get away with it, she won't do it.

So it's just trying to do things like enrichment or put her scatter

feeds that little bit further away so it just promotes her to

exercise a bit more without her actually thinking that she's

working hard for it, if you know what I mean.

Ross and the team have created a daily exercise routine to

help rehabilitate and stretch her limbs.

What we're after is for you to walk over that log without touching it.

Can you do that?

Let's see.

They place logs for her to step over,

encouraging Anne to lift her back legs instead of dragging them.

So, as she walked in, she's quite slow anyway,

but her front feet should go over pretty easy.

There you go, Anne. Move up.

Like so.

You can see the back legs, they kind of drag a bit, she kind of

uses that log a little bit at the moment just to get her feet over.

Good go, Anne. Move on.

What would make me happy would be her to hurdle it.

But unfortunately, being an older lady and an elephant,

that's not going to happen,

but what we're trying to aim for is for her to actually lift those feet

and use those muscles to lift the feet off the floor, over the log.

But I think that's going to take some time,

but the more we do it, the better she'll get.

It's a complex problem,

so they've enlisted the help of an expert in the field -

animal osteopath Tony Nevin.

He's been treating humans and animals for over 25 years.

Clever technology allows him to begin his examination from

outside the enclosure.

This is an infrared thermal imaging camera.

It basically just reads the heat signature off living tissue.

Now, with Anne, we know she's got particular problems, and it's

a nice way of looking at her without having to do really invasive tests.

Hot areas show up as red and white.

They indicate a lot of blood flow, which can signify pain.

While darker colours can indicate a lack of blood flow and

potentially different problems.

Her trunk is really hot, which you'd expect,

there's lots of muscles in that.

Her tail is perpetually cold, so from halfway down it's pitch-black.

That's something we just want to keep an eye on,

because you don't want her bashing the tail and it becoming injured,

because she might not be able to feel it as well.

But today it's the shoulder and hip muscles Tony's keen to work on.

A little bit warm over the base of her...

sort of where her spine and pelvis meet,

and this is one of the reasons why I want to get her lifting her

back legs a bit more, so she's not just working that part of the

back, she's actually flexing the legs a little bit more.

With the problem area identified, Ross and Luke start getting

her loosened up with a jumbo spa treatment.

We use a pressure washer, so that helps with the muscles and stuff.

It just means that we can get that blood flowing,

and if she's warmed up and we can really see then what we need

to attack, if anything, if any problems,

it shows up a bit more when she's had a nice warm bath.

Osteopathy involves the careful manipulation of muscles and

joints to try and increase mobility,

relieve muscle tension and enhance blood supply to tissues.

By gently working like this, I can just work with her

and see where she wants to lean.

You've got 3-plus tonnes of animal,

how am I going to be able to affect this?

So you have to sort of think outside the box

and use her weight to do a lot of the work.

Now I'm pushing up, effectively,

into her left shoulder at the moment, she's leaning her

weight here, she's taking the weight off the left front foot.

What this does is it makes it easier for her to move about but also,

at rest, she uses less energy cos she's not holding muscles as tight.

It looks easy, but she's pushing quite a lot of weight against

me and I'm locked against this post behind me.

So I usually go away thinking, "Oh, that was quite nice,"

and then the next day I'm a bit sort of achy in certain places.

With the help from Tony and the keepers,

the hope is that Anne will continue to thrive for many years to come.

Since Anne arrived here, we have seen her get a lot stronger,

both physically but also mentally, the way she interacts with people.

She's begun vocalising a little bit. Her skin, muscles,

everything about her, she's eating well, her teeth are brilliant.

She's just an absolute model patient.

She's fantastic.

Last summer, we brought you the incredible moment

when two red panda cubs were born at the park.

It was particularly good news, because red pandas have become so

threatened in the wild they're classified as endangered,

with less than 10,000 individuals on the planet.

As we're discovering today,

all the new babies here have been growing up fast over the winter.

-Hi, Sam.

-Hi.

-I was expecting wee babies.

-These all look pretty fully grown.

-I know. They're growing so fast.

Hello.

So, where's our babies, where's our cubs?

This is Mum, and then we've got Dad in the middle,

and this is one of our babies just here at the front.

-They're all exactly the same size almost.

-They are.

They're absolutely huge. They've grown very fast.

So how can you tell which ones are the cubs and which ones

-are Mum and Dad?

-The cubs have slightly different facial markings,

-they're also a lot fluffier...

-Mm-hmm.

-So they have kind of like

a baby coat, it's very fluffy and very cute. And as they get bigger,

they'll moult that out and eventually look like the adults.

-So there was two girls born...

-Yes.

-What did you call them?

This is Tika and the other one is called Pima.

Lovely girls.

I know you were delighted when they were born.

-How important is it to get new cubs?

-So important.

These guys are endangered in the wild.

Anything we can do in captivity to boost the population is just

-so important.

-And these cubs will become part of a breeding programme.

Tell me how that works.

Yeah, that's right, so we're very lucky,

we've got two little girls, females are very valuable for breeding,

of course, so when these guys are about a year old,

they'll go off to another collection and hopefully be matched up

with boyfriends and hopefully continue the breeding programme.

Quite nerve-racking for me thinking of them going off,

-but really exciting as well.

-Yeah.

It's lovely to catch up with them seven months on.

You're doing well.

Last summer, I was also lucky enough to have a close encounter

with one of the park's new babies, a hand-reared penguin chick.

Hello. Hello. Would you like to come here? Hello. There you go.

-There we go.

-OK, so...

-And hold it just under my arm like...

-Yeah.

-So he's...

-Oh, look!

-There we go.

-I've fallen in love.

-Hello. So, who have I got here?

-So you've got Echo.

-Echo.

And I have got Ant.

Keeper Georgia and her team are responsible for this bustling

colony of 34 Humboldt penguins,

including 12 breeding pairs and seven young penguin chicks.

Would you say you have a pretty unique bond with these guys?

Definitely.

They talk to us quite a lot, they see us as their parents,

effectively.

But last September, tragedy struck.

Head of animal operations

Darren Beasley was forced to close the doors to Penguin Island

while its inhabitants battled a deadly disease.

Some weeks ago, we found a very poorly penguin and it died,

and the instant diagnosis for this particular bird was that it

had a thing called avian malaria.

Now, lots of people know how dangerous it is for humans,

but this particular malaria is specific to birds, and in fact

penguins are one of the species that are very susceptible to it.

Harmless to humans,

avian malaria is carried by mosquitoes and can be deadly.

Once a bird is bitten,

its bloodstream is infected with parasites.

So in here we have Peaches and Penelope.

Unfortunately neither of them can keep food down at the moment,

so we're providing them with small chunks or fish soup mixture.

Treating the disease has a severe impact on the immune system,

making their resistance to other infections dangerously low.

We got rid of malaria more or less straight away in that first

course of treatment, but the birds without the immune system are

open to all the other bacteria and germs and things that are in

the air, so one by one they had breathing difficulties or

they had some fungus.

And it's this horrible decline.

Their enclosure has become a ghost town.

Of 34 penguins, just seven remain.

We've lost so many birds, it's so devastating, and to see your

world sort of crumble around you and the heartbreak that causes, it's...

it's been a pretty dreadful time.

You know, the penguin keepers, they've hatched these

birds out of eggs, you know, they've hand-reared them, they've...

day and night they've been feeding and rearing and watching them

growing, and they're dying in their arms.

For Georgia, every loss is heart-wrenching.

I've spent the last four years with the penguins,

and they're like my children.

People do say, "Don't get too attached to animals,"

but when you're working with them

pretty much every single day of the year, it's very hard not to.

Georgia's closest bond was with Ant,

the penguin chick she'd hand-reared since she was hatched.

I've spent a lot of time and encouragement with Ant to start

eating, so she can come and move in with the colony.

And she's doing very well.

But Ant was one of the many who didn't make it.

I got very upset when, unfortunately,

I found Ant in the morning, so that's the...

worst loss for me.

Humboldt penguins mate for life, but only one breeding pair remains.

Most, like Princess, are now alone.

Princess has unfortunately lost her partner Eusebir,

and also her baby as well.

So unfortunately she's not had a good summer either.

No-one can tell us how an animal feels,

but Georgia's convinced this colony has been gravely affected.

I believe penguins get sad, and they do bray and they do call for

their partners a few days after they've lost them.

PENGUIN BRAYS

Experienced keepers like Ryan are on hand to support their

colleagues who may be going through this for the first time.

He was working with the giraffes in 2013 when a disease hit,

claiming five of the herd.

When you have an event like this, you know,

an illness or sickness or bug, whatever, going through

your animals, it is just a horrendous feeling.

It's really difficult to keep coming in, day after day after day,

when you really don't know what you're going to walk into.

Your focus has to naturally be on the ones that still,

you know, have a chance of being saved.

Thankfully, I think with science on our side, you know,

we've managed to sort of curtail it. I'm hoping we're through the worst.

GEORGIA WHISTLES

Good boy, Nick. Good boy.

Georgia is hopeful that her precious remaining penguins might

finally be on the road to recovery.

This is what we want them to be doing.

This is natural behaviour.

Preening their coats, having a swim, and eating food out the water.

And I get very excited every day now if another penguin

has started to eat,

so it's very encouraging signs that they're getting back to normality.

We've got to pick ourselves up.

We've got to say, "Right, there is a future,

"you've got to look to next season and breeding, and we've lost

"so many pairs and so many youngsters from pairs,

"we have got to rebuild."

So, you know, I've put the requests out to all our

penguin friends in the UK and Europe, and I'm hoping that we will

get birds from other collections and we will rebuild.

Earlier, we brought you some wonderful news -

the arrival of the first cheetah cubs to ever be born at the park.

I went up to the house to do my morning checks.

As soon as I opened the door,

Wilma came straight over and I just saw them on the floor behind.

I was like, "There's little cheetah babies! Oh, my God!"

Twins Poppy and Winston are now five months old.

Now they've had their inoculations,

it's only a matter of weeks until they'll come face-to-face

with visitors' cars driving through their enclosure.

As they become increasingly independent from their mother,

it's important they keep well away from the cars.

Nice and secure.

So Amy wants to encourage them to explore toys in their

enclosure instead.

We're all set up, so you've got rope ball up in the tree,

we've got a larger tube and a smaller tube all set up around us.

So we're ready to let them out. So...can't wait.

The twins have never seen anything like this before.

It's a huge first step into their life in the safari park.

But will they dare to leave Mum and have a play?

Winston's having a good old look. Poppy is as well, actually.

They're quite level in their interest. They're sort of...

scouting around and having a good look,

not getting too close at the minute.

Quite happy to actually spread apart, they're not staying together.

And Wilma's...Wilma's having a look, she's going for the tube.

But it'll probably take a bit longer just to get their confidence

of the new smells around it, just checking it out,

making sure it's nothing that's going to do them any harm.

There's nothing like a tantalising treat to encourage adventure.

So Amy left some chunks of meat for them to find.

Wilma has caught the scent and is showing her babies the way.

She's found the meat, and the cubs have literally just ran up.

This is really exciting.

I think the little tube will help as well, because it's

a bit smaller, so they can see out the other end a bit clearer,

and hopefully they'll build their confidence in that one.

-Poppy's running through the tube.

-SHE LAUGHS

And one of them's just gone through the big tube as well.

Oh, this is great.

And out the other side. Yay!

It's not just the cubs' development that is significant.

This is also an important day for mum Wilma.

Loosening the apron strings isn't easy,

but she seems happy to allow her growing cubs a bit more freedom.

She was the first one up there,

but she's now relaxed and just letting them play.

She's watching, she's having a good roll around as well, and they keep

going up to her and just making sure

they're OK to go back and play again.

It's building their confidence all the time.

Great success.

Wilma's enjoying it, and both cubs are having a great time up there.

And it's great for us to watch. It really is great for us to watch.

This is what we come to work for.

The keepers will spend the next months testing

a whole range of new ideas on these cats.

Some of the big cats have been at the park for 20 years,

so the variety of enrichment ideas need to be huge.

LIONS GROWL

We've asked Amy to meet us over with some of the bigger, older residents,

to find out why it's so important to keep those ideas coming.

These guys trash a lot of things that you spend a long time making.

Oh, it takes us a very long time to make anything and...

yeah, within a few minutes, they can destroy it.

And obviously coming up with enrichment ideas is really

fun, doing them is really fun,

but it is very good for the animals themselves as well, isn't it?

Definitely. Not just for their minds, stimulating their minds,

but also for their muscles. It's very important.

Lions are quite lazy, so they're

-sitting around, they're not doing a lot during the day.

-Yeah.

So it is very important to get them moving and get them using

-their muscles.

-So it's actually, effectively it's making them do a

bit more for their food than just sort of lie around

-and it be delivered.

-Exactly. Exactly.

LION SNARLS

Well, Amy has challenged her team to come up with

a completely new big idea that will encourage their natural

hunting instincts, and Jean has headed over to see how it goes.

Oh, wow! This looks amazing, Eloise!

-Yes.

-What a big operation.

Tell me how this is going to work today.

So we've brought in lots of boxes, which we've filled,

some which have got meat in,

some have just got straw in with a little bit of blood as

encouragement,

and then just a couple of scattered pieces around as well.

So most people would think of lions as being great hunters,

you know, "king of the jungle", prowling around to find their food,

-but they actually do a lot of scavenging.

-Yeah, definitely.

They're not actually that great at hunting.

African wild dogs and cheetah are much better at hunting than them.

So they will actually scavenge from the food that those animals can

hunt and kill. Also hyenas, they'll scavenge from them.

The only animal that they can't actually take meat from is

leopards, because the leopards take the meat up the tree.

Hopefully they're going to smell this meat,

-come bounding over the hill, and go for it.

-Definitely.

And of course we've also got our trusty log cam.

That's going to be picking up all the action, so good luck.

-Right, are we ready to go?

-Yes, we're all good.

-Oh, here they come now.

-Oh, here they come.

Oh, what an amazing sight.

Some of the girls coming up and we've also got some...

one of the big boys just behind them,

so he's a lot quicker than normal.

And someone's got stuck right into their box there.

Pulled the box open.

They're definitely going for the boxes quickly.

LION GROWLS

You said you've never done this before, so they wouldn't know

what the boxes are, but they've just gone right in there.

Is that their sense of smell?

Yeah, they'll definitely be able to smell the meat.

-Oh, Klaus is not happy.

-Just fling a box into us.

We've got Jimba jumping up now. Ohh! Ooh! Oh, not quite.

Good to see them using those jumping skills as well.

Oh, you can see Simba's getting a little bit aggressive.

Could that be a little bit of competition for food?

Yeah, he's trying to figure out which is the best box to have.

We've got this big box right here with quite a lot of meat in it,

but for some reason none of the lions are going for it.

Oh! Is that someone coming towards it now? Just sniffing round it.

-In you go.

-Although they are kings of the jungle,

is what they get called, they are still very cautious,

they do want to survive, they don't know what's going to be in that.

So anything new, they're always a bit like, "What's going on?"

Oh, look, they've knocked over log cam!

So the fact that they're not getting into this box right away is

delaying their feed a little bit, so that's good for them.

Yes, definitely.

The day is more exciting for them,

which is what we want, we want them to have an enriched day.

Normally they will sleep, but they might just keep scavenging

because they might think there's more out there.

And Tana's come back to this box,

so she knows that there's definitely something in there.

-Yeah, that's good to see.

-She's just a bit more cautious of it.

-There you go, she's found a piece.

-Oh, there, she got the prize.

Well done.

It's great to see this pride displaying some of the

behaviours they would as scavengers in the wild.

Back now to Penguin Island,

where the process of rebuilding the colony has begun.

In the end, only six survived the outbreak of avian malaria,

but other collections did answer Darren and Georgia's call for help.

And now there are seven new mouths to feed.

As soon as we got the penguins, we brought them in and mixed

them immediately with our original penguins.

We'll just let them settle in and get used to their new friends,

leaving them alone to get used to their enclosure inside as well.

SHE WHISTLES

Until today, they've remained indoors,

but the time has come for Georgia to try and lure them outside.

Hello.

Some of the new penguins are getting more confident,

coming over to us and feeding from our hands.

But they're not all keen to explore.

I think it's going to take a while.

It's going to take quite a long time to get them used to coming outside.

Bruno. Come on then.

-SHE WHISTLES

-Good boy, Django.

They are very curious, penguins are, and they like to explore new

areas, but it will take a while for them to pop their head outside.

Penguins! Come on!

We've got Darwin.

Darwin's only a chick, so he's about nine months old now.

He's very friendly.

Darwin. Come on then.

You going to have it if I throw it?

Catch it. Good boy.

And Flower as well. She's a little bit delicate.

Flower's being brave.

You going to come out?

Yeah! Well done.

Well done.

GEORGIA WHISTLES

It'll be really interesting when it does come to breeding season,

what will happen,

because there are some original penguins that don't have mates.

We do have more girls than boys, but that does give the opportunity

to the boys to have a partner each, so that the males aren't fighting

over females, however the females do fight over the boys.

Whoever they end up with, the team are hoping that, for some of

the breeding pairs, it will result in the tiny patter of penguin feet.

Once one penguin couple starts mating,

it sets off the rest of them, so it'll get the ball rolling

and hopefully they'll choose their set partners.

With an expanding population to plan for,

the penguin team once again have a future to look forward to.

We've got a blooming good set of keepers here, you know.

For them to be dragged emotionally through what they've been,

to see them get through that and the strength that they have

together, I'm really proud.

As much as we'll always remember our original penguins, they were

like our children and our grandchildren,

we'll have that again, eventually.

UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYS

One of the greatest privileges for Kate and I working on Animal Park

over the years is when we're introduced to new baby animals.

And today is no different, because we've come up to meet Amy

-and these two magnificent cheetah...

-KATE GASPS

-Oh, my goodness!

-..Winston and Poppy.

Oh, look at them with their little Mohicans!

Hello, sweethearts.

-Now grumbling over here, is this Mum?

-This is Mum.

She's being very protective.

I mean, they are fantastically protective, aren't they, as mums?

Yeah, incredibly. She's been an absolutely amazing mum so far, yeah.

The first time for her. Amazing that she's done so well.

-So how old are Winston and Poppy now?

-So they're five months old now.

Awww. And I love the fact that they've got these little Mohicans,

-and they last for quite a long time, don't they?

-They do, yes.

-They are starting to go.

-Awww.

-Which is very cute.

-So which one's this one?

-So this is Winston.

-Hello, Winston.

-And is he the braver one of the two?

-He is the braver one.

And have they got very distinct personalities already?

Yes, completely.

-Winston would do absolutely everything...

-Yeah.

-But Poppy

does...she does come over eventually.

-She will also follow Winston...

-Right.

..but he is always the first one to come over.

I mean, from a sort of conservation point of view,

cheetahs are very endangered in the wild.

Winston and Poppy are...

really important to the future of the species, aren't they?

They are. They are very important.

Mum and Dad Wilma and Carl both came from Africa,

-so we've be finding homes for them already, people want them.

-Really?

-They're that important that they'll carry on breeding.

-And...

I was going to say so you can carry on breeding from them.

-This is a genetic line that they can help extend.

-Definitely.

I tell you what, I'm going to stay here and do a little bit of bonding

with these absolutely gorgeous and incredibly important cats.

You guys are the future. Do you know that?

And you can all find out what's happening on tomorrow's programme.

The team attempt to stop a killer disease in its tracks.

Most of the things in here will either jump on you or eat you.

It's a huge undertaking.

Jean must perform a pedicure on the pygmy goats.

But she's got to catch them first. LAUGHTER

Oh! Who's that?

Steady, steady, steady.

And the park are on tenterhooks as a critically endangered calf is born.

You just can't guarantee anything.

There's all that and more coming up on the next Animal Park.