Episode 4 Animal Park

Hello and welcome to Animal Park.

-I'm Kate Humble...

-And I'm Ben Fogle and this is Longleat Maze.

At two miles long, it's the longest hedge maze in England.

And there's only one way out. Now, the head gardener here can do the maze in five minutes, but one poor,

unfortunate visitor was stuck in here for over four and a half hours. I hope that doesn't happen to us!

Me too. While we try to find our way out, here's what's coming up on today's programme.

It's time for the lion cub to venture into the great outdoors, if only she wasn't such a scaredy cat.

Dung beetles love dung.

So why is the one named Hercules turning his nose up at the stuff?

And the otter pups would be ready for their first solid food,

except that Mum keeps scoffing the lot.

But first, we're going up to the lion house because it's an important day for Kabir's pride.

Both of his two females each have one cub.

Luna's baby is now six weeks old,

and has been named Jasira, which means "bold" in Swahili.

Yendi's cub is older by eight weeks,

and also has an African name, Malaika, which means "angel."

While the cubs were very young, the whole family was kept inside the lion house.

And for safety's sake, they've been isolated from each other.

But now Malaika is finally old enough to go outside for the first time.

It's going to be quite an experience, though keeper Bob Trollope

knows it's a stage that must be carefully managed.

Initially, what I want to do is just let Mum and cub out,

keep the others in, just so, basically, Mum can get used

to going back out and cubby can see the big wide world for the first time.

In the worst scenario, I suppose, Malaika could panic and run off and just get...

Well, not get lost cos we know where she is, but not be in contact with Mum.

So this is the moment of truth, we'll see if

they will go out.

Startled her little bit. Come on, darling. Oh, yeah.

That's it, Mum's out. You're supposed to go with her, darling.

That's it, call her, come on.

Oh, what's that?

So this is the first view she's ever had of being outside, so...

This is a big step to take for the poor little thing, you know, it's a big wide world out there.

She's got to step on grass, which she's never, ever done before,

so anything that she can see or hear is totally new.

MALAIKA YELPS

Those noises sound to us really pitiful, but they are designed to, just to get Mum's attention.

Mum is less than 20 metres away, just waiting patiently.

She's got up, so...

possibly,

any day now, she will go.

There she goes. That's it.

She's out into the big wide world.

Good girl.

Good girl.

But Malaika is unsure, and retreats back to the safety of home.

Yendi is starting to give up hope.

But hold on, here she comes again.

She's going in and out a bit more often now, so what I think I might do is shut this a bit,

so that all she can do now is wait for Mum.

Come on, darling.

Trapped outside, Malaika finally makes a move, but in an unlikely direction.

Don't go up there.

No, there's nothing up there for you.

You can't get out that way.

That's the door. Come on, out.

If we wander off so that her mum can't see us too near to the cub,

then she'll more likely come and get...

That's it, good girl.

Cubby's coming down.

Reunited.

There they are.

Are you excited now?

Mum is just checking her over.

She's too big to pick up.

That's what we wanted to see ten minutes ago.

This is the first time that Malaika has experienced open space, seen trees and felt grass.

Just looking great, it took a little while

but this is how you would expect them to be now.

Cubby getting a little bit braver and wandering off, Mum getting it back in line.

This is one of these moments where you...

It's a memory forever, because it's the first time out and it's so nice to see them out and about,

running about the grass and finding new things to explore and to get into.

The next stage will be to introduce Malaika to her dad, Kabir, out in the open.

So far they've been kept in separate pens because male lions have been known to kill new-born cubs.

Over the next few days, they'll be going out on their own, then we will incorporate Kabir.

I can't see a problem, but you've got to have that in the back of your mind.

I should imagine Kabir will be pestered like no-one's business

by Malaika, which is all a good thing.

It's just how he reacts to it.

There's going to be a few more nail-biting moments, I think.

Down by Pets' Corner, part of the stable block has been developed into Old Joe's Mine.

The subterranean theme means this is the perfect place to exhibit nocturnal animals like bats.

But now I've heard they've taken the idea a step further.

I'm in Old Joe's Mine with old Jo Hawthorne.

-Thanks(!)

-I couldn't resist that, sorry.

You've been doing an enormous amount of work in here, haven't you?

We have, we've got lots of extra things,

creatures we've added in to make it more exciting and more of an underground-creature type of thing.

Now, what's going on in here, cos this is completely new?

Right. Well, a few clues.

-Lots of branches...

-Yeah...

-You know, a nice secure kind of enclosure so that whatever is going in here can't escape...

-Right.

And something which, years ago, would have stayed down in the mines to keep the miners safe and company.

OK, well you've got some other things down here.

-Welly boots...

-We have.

-Is that going in there?

Yeah, that's a bit of decoration, just to give you a clue

of the kind of environment that these birds would have been in.

Ah, birds! You let it out the bag!

-Birds, so birds that live in mines?

-Yeah.

I can't think what that would be.

-Should I give you that as well?

-Thank you.

Birds that live in mines?

-Go on then, you're gonna have to enlighten me.

-OK.

Well, since way back, since 1911, believe it or not,

the coal miners that used to go down in the pits, deep underground,

thousands of feet, used to take canaries with them down into the mine.

Of course they did!

-Obviously this was simply because they actually detected gases that humans can't...

-Right...

One of them being carbon monoxide, which is colourless, odourless and tasteless, yet the canaries

would pick up on that, shows signs of stress that, you know, they could

feel this in the air. And they'd actually...

The miners would be able to tell from that and take them back up and be safe.

Wow. So where are the canaries?

We've got them in their little home over there...

-Oh, yeah, shall I bring it over?

-Waiting to come into their new one.

Here you are. They are so pretty, aren't they?

-They are.

-Aren't they gorgeous?

They sing the most lovely song, especially the male there.

Which one's the male and which one...? Are they both male?

-The male's got the dark ring around his neck there.

-Oh yeah.

You can see this little girl here, she's the female.

-Wow. So this is the first time they going into their new enclosure?

-Into their new home, yeah.

Right. This is going to be a bit of a juggle, isn't it?

-It is, yeah.

-How are we going to do this?

Best thing is to put them down in there on the floor, I think,

and just unlatch the top of the cage.

-Right.

-And then hopefully they should flutter up onto their new branches.

Let's see how they like their new home.

They'll say, "We love this cage, we're not sure about that big space."

Maybe if we tip it up onto its side and they can actually see...

Shall I tip it?

That's fine. That's OK.

Shall we move back away and see...

-Hopefully they should come out.

-They come out. They're incredibly pretty.

So, people, when they come into the mine...

Hopefully they'll greet them and they'll give a little whistle,

a nice greeting as they come in the door.

The first one's ventured out.

Oh, they're great.

Well, we have got one final touch, haven't we, for the new enclosure?

-Shall we...

-We will.

-Shall I hand you that?

Thank you.

There we go.

Right, this is so everyone knows their names.

-Tweety...

-Tweety...

-..and Pie.

-There we go.

Enjoy your new enclosure, guys.

There are over 400 animals in the safari park

that, between them, consume over 800 tonnes of food a year.

Their appetites may vary but, from the biggest animals out in the park to the smallest ones in Pets' Corner,

what goes in one end still has to come out the other.

Longleat's animals produce a staggering 1,500 tonnes of dung every year,

enough to cover a football pitch 50 times over.

And that needs an awful lot of mucking out.

Deputy Head Warden Ian Turner has seen his fair share of filth.

If you imagine this rhino we've got here,

you'll be talking three or four wheelbarrowfuls per day just from him alone.

We've got giraffes, zebras, camels, lions, ankole, monkeys,

the whole lot, all together you get a massive big pile of manure.

Every single keeper, they can't escape the mucking out,

which is where all the muck is, and the manure and stuff.

Every keeper has to end up doing that, somewhere along the lines.

The Pets' Corner staff have smaller manure, but it's harder, it's a dustpan and brush.

You've got to get in the nooks and crannies, whereas these lot,

it's a lot but it's a big shovel, a big wheel barrow and tipped away.

Faced with such a mountain of muck, the keepers sweep and shovel relentlessly.

There's no giant loo you can flush it all down,

so the safari park has come up with an environmentally-friendly solution.

Once a week, all the dung in the park is collected

from drop-off points and taken to the animal-dung equivalent of Everest.

If you can't guess, this is the dung heap.

There's what looks like giraffe dung,

that looks like... That's rhino, by the looks of that.

Literally all this area here, and that behind us,

is all the muck what comes from the safari park.

It's left here to rot down and eventually it's all

put in a muck spreader and put back on the field to make the grass grow.

-And you can see...

-HE SNIFFS

..it's good stuff, that is.

In Britain, millions of tonnes of cattle,

pig and poultry manure are spread on agricultural land every year.

Here on the Longleat estate, farmers like Steve Crossman use something much more exotic.

Well, we spread it on the ground and it's to replenish all the food

that's been taken out of the ground, grass needs to be fed.

And all the dung is put on and it replaces all the bits

and pieces that have come out of the ground, that the grass has used to make the hay in the summer months.

The more organic matters that we can actually put back in the ground, obviously, the better. It's cheaper,

there is a waste product which is good for the ground and it's put back in as a good balance.

To complete the environmentally friendly cycle, the hay which grows on this

fertilized land is fed back to the safari park animals in the winter.

Farmers and keepers may do the recycling

here on the estate but in the wild there's someone else to do the job.

It's the African dung beetle and, for this little fellow, a pile of muck is seventh heaven.

In Africa, up to 16,000 beetles have been counted in just one heap of elephant dung.

They also mate in it, lay eggs in it and burrow into the ground taking it with them.

In fact, one dung beetle can bury 250 times its own body weight in

a single night, which is the equivalent of an eleven stone man burying four bull elephants.

Appropriately enough, Pets' Corner call their dung beetle Hercules.

But now, tragically, this poor little chap appears to have lost his natural desire for dung.

Old Hercules here, I call him Old Hercules cos, in fact, he is an ancient beetle.

We've had him a couple of years, we got him from another collection and he was their

last dung beetle they had and they sort of permanently loaned him to us, we were doing an exhibition here.

And they said, when they brought him they said he actually eats fruit.

I laughed, as I was under the same impression as everybody else at Longleat -

dung beetles eat dung, everybody knows that.

But he's more than happy eating a bit of ripe fruit, so I don't know whether he's an exception, or perhaps

it's because he's a bachelor and he ain't got a girlfriend or something, I don't know.

Obviously, this guy, if he was doing his job properly

as we think evolution said he should be, you can probably see he's designed

on his front forearms, if you want to call it that, he's got a special...

they're not quite pincers, they're more like brushes

and they use them to either push the balls of poo along

in some species or to shovel the poo and get their way through it.

It seems pretty disgusting, but that's what they are designed for.

So what I'm proposing to do is, just to settle this once and for all, I'm gonna go and get a bit of poo.

I'm gonna go up and get real poo, I dunno,

some rhino poo or something like that.

He might push it, or dig it, he might do something, it will solve the mystery.

There are a few things every self-respecting

stately home of any historical importance simply must have.

Plenty of ancestors on the walls, the odd ghost or two, and a certain amount of heavy metal.

I'm in the great hall, hanging up some of Longleat House's armour with conservator Ken Windess.

Now Ken, the first thing I've really noticed it is how heavy all of this stuff is. What's it made of?

It's straightforward steel, but the breastplate is a lot heavier than the back plate.

-So this is obviously a breastplate.

-That's right.

They always assumed that you were gonna get attacked from the front.

-So whereas a back plate presumably is...

-There's a back plate there.

You can see it's very light compared with that.

And I'm surprised that it's so, kind of, dour and black and not shiny like I imagined armour would always be.

-Yeah, shiny armour is just reserved, if you like, for the officers and knights of old, so to speak.

-OK.

These were made specifically for the soldiers,

and the soldiers were made up of the staff

of Longleat at the time, ie stable boys and the people like that, and

probably most of it was made by the local blacksmith, because he was also an armourer as well.

So this is during the Civil War?

Civil War period, yeah.

And if you'd been around in the house at that time, this would have been your task as well?

That would probably have been my helmet.

Incredible. Tell me about the helmet.

The helmets of this house, are called lobsters because of the shape of the...

So lobsters have a sort of tail at the back to protect them.

-Can I put it on?

-Yeah, by all means.

It all looks quite small, actually.

-I think people tended to be a lot smaller in those days.

-Right.

And presumably this was to protect the face, the front, from swords?

What sort of weapons would they have used?

-Spears and things like that.

-And we've got...

So there's the helmet, and we've got the breastplate and back plate.

This would have been for the arms?

Is there left and a right?

Yeah, you see on the display we've only got

a left-handed, or left-armed, armour, simply because the sword arm was always kept free for...

So literally you would have worn it on that hand and you would have swung...

It would have been totally concealing that arm...

That would be to protect the body.

-Are there any kind of damage to any of the things?

-Yes.

You can believe, if you like, that these are musket ball indentations.

-So that could have saved somebody's life at some point.

-It does look...

Do you think it's possible?

I like to believe that, yeah.

So, during the Civil War, where did the house stand?

Where were their allegiance?

Well, basically he was a King's man, underneath it all,

but he did tend to sit on the fence, he did entertain both sides.

-This is Lord Thynne of the...?

-That's right.

Of course, you had the Woodhouse Castle and you had Hungerford and houses like that and they

were totally different armies. You had the royalists and, of course, you had the parliamentarians.

So basically, the house sat on the fence, went where it suited them?

That's right. I mean, he did collect money for the King and I think if he had to

declare which side he was on, I think he would have gone for the King,

but he never actually took up arms himself.

Was there ever a risk that the house was going to be plundered, did they ever...?

Yes, there was that risk but what they did is they actually

took the valuable stuff away.

There is a story, how true it is I don't know, where they actually took

all the silver and hid it and the silver has never been found to this day.

So somewhere in the Longleat estate there could be a big horde of silver buried?

I keep looking but I haven't found it!

What an amazing story.

I better get back to hanging. Where do you want this helmet?

It's been a few months now since Babs had to be put to sleep.

She was 37 years old, which is a very great age

for a southern white rhino and her arthritis had become very bad.

Babs was in constant pain and there was nothing left that could be done

to help, though that was little comfort to keeper, Adie Lanfear or deputy head warden, Ian Turner.

It's always a tough decision when you've got to put an animal to sleep.

It's the hardest thing we have to do as a keeper, to obviously be there, when we put her down. It is hard.

-Very hard.

-We left it quite a while as she had been on a lot of medication.

It got to the stage where she was having such difficulty getting up in the morning that,

one morning, she had been trying to get up through the night,

and she had got grazes all over her, a cut under her stomach.

You've got to think of quality of life for the rhino.

In an ideal world, we'd love to keep her for ever but you've got to

put that to the back of your mind and think of what's best for her.

Babs had come a long way

since she was born in South Africa back in 1969.

In those days, the white rhino was in danger

of being wiped out in the wild by poachers.

But Babs came to Britain while still young and arrived at Longleat, 13 years ago.

She was paired up with a male, Winston, and the hope was that they would breed.

Unfortunately, it was not to be.

Keeper Kevin Nibbs spent a lot of time watching them together.

She got on very well with Winston.

Whenever they went out, they would on occasion have a little quarrel.

But most of the time she was very chilled out.

There was no romance, but Winston would follow her

around everywhere she would go, and sometimes they would have a little bit of a grump on with each other,

a little bit of an argument, but they seemed to get on. Yeah.

Babs never had any babies of her own, but when three

youngsters arrive at Longleat a couple of years ago, it seemed to bring out her maternal instincts.

One of the good things about Babs was that she was always sort of semi-calm.

When these new ones from South Africa came down, she just

took them around, showed them all the ropes, she led them out.

And it was all that, "I can do this - just follow me!"

She was so useful because it all went so smoothly when the young ones came.

They always looked to Babs to show the ways round the park.

They would follow her around. There was a bond there, an attachment.

If something kicked off, Babs was always pretty quiet.

She would calm it down pretty quick.

She wouldn't let the others go too far and if they did,

we could always manoeuvre Babs with the tractor very easily.

But one of the most endearing things about Babs

was how keen she was on maintaining contact with the keepers.

She liked to be stroked behind the ear.

She liked to come over and she liked to have a fuss made of.

But now the show must go on as they look after the four remaining rhinos.

Babs has gone but she's definitely not forgotten.

Just doing their feeds now and I was looking around for Babs' feed bucket.

And I was, what are you doing?

We do miss her.

It's still fresh in our minds, obviously, but you've got to move on, these days.

Got to keep going for them.

There's a big empty space. The little guys, they will come on,

but not for a while.

It'll take a long time for it to sink in

and realise she won't be there when you open the door.

Never replace Babs.

You can't replace her.

But time, they say, is the great healer.

Now we're going to find out if it's true.

I've come up to the rhino house to catch up with deputy head warden, Ian Turner and keeper, Kevin Nibbs,

to find out how life has moved on up here, since the sad demise of Babs several months ago.

-That was obviously a pretty awful time up here, wasn't it?

-Yeah.

Kevin, it was probably one of the first times that you'd had to deal with the situation

-like that.

-It was a terrible decision to make but ultimately, it worked out for the best.

Moving on, how are the rhinos that are still here?

-They've definitely got more confidence.

-Do you think they relied on her before?

They tended to follow her around but now they've found their own feet

and they go off on their little adventures.

-So who have we got here?

-This one's Rosina.

The youngest female.

Is that a really obvious thing that you have noticed, this increase in confidence?

-Definitely.

-They've grown up a bit, haven't they?

She was maybe keeping them a little bit down.

Under her hoof?

They were like babies and now they've grown up a bit, and

he's started to show a little bit more interest in both of them,

so hopefully, we should be expecting mating this year.

Really? You think that he might get together with some of them?

That's fantastic news.

And then further along, moving one more, this is...

This is Morashi.

I should know by now!

And, again, they have all obviously got through it, like you say.

So, the big question is, what about Winston? Where is he?

We have got Winston out in our paddock area outside.

Why is he out here?

You can't have the two males together.

Two males together would fight and obviously one of them would end up with serious injuries.

Now obviously, Winston and Babs were sort of mates, weren't they?

-Did you notice him pining for Babs when she was gone?

-For a day or two.

He knew something was missing from the house. But after that he just got on with it.

Normally in the wild, he's just on his own.

They come together for mating, otherwise they wouldn't mix together.

And I suppose he's getting a lot of extra attention from all of you.

He's getting a lot of tickles. We always give him a pat.

He's loving it, actually. And he get a lot more food now - he gets Babs' share as well!

So it's all turned round, it's all turned out good. And life moves on.

That's how it happens.

-Absolutely.

-Guys, thank you very much.

Thanks.

I'm out in the deer park with head of section, Tim Yeo.

We're with the red deer and what...

do we need to do today, Tim?

Well, Kate, we're out looking to pick up antlers that the stag here has cast recently.

Now, which one is the stag?

Can we see him relatively clearly?

It's really difficult now that they're all the same, isn't it?

He's actually got his back to us at the moment.

-They tend to have thicker, furrier necks, don't they, the stags?

-That's right.

Is it that one right in the middle? Just walking away from us there.

You can see that, as you say, that shaggy neck.

There he is, walking towards us now.

So why do they drop them?

-Well, the antler is used...

-Oh, here's one here.

Here's one of his antlers, here.

You can see, this is an impressive looking...

-It's amazing!

-It's a tool

to defend and to sort of fight off other stags, so they do get damaged.

This stag hasn't had to fight off any other stags because

he was put in here on his own, so that he could breed with the hinds

but because they damage them sometimes in fighting, they need to grow a new set.

-These drop off at this time of year, sort of spring time of year, every year?

-Every year, yes.

Now they need to concentrate on feeding themselves up.

They've lost a lot of body condition during the rut, and they need to get all that back,

and get themselves ready for the autumn, which is the rut again.

So how quickly will the antlers start to grow back?

Do you know, Kate, it is incredibly fast. It really is.

As soon as they cast, very quickly they start to regrow again.

They are casting in the early part of March and by the end of August, you've got this again.

That size? That much growth?

In a year? That's amazing. There's the other one?

Let's get the pair and see what they look like because he must have looked absolutely magnificent.

They certainly do.

And what is it made out of?

Is it bone of some sort?

I think it's very similar to bone.

It's the nearest thing to bone.

It's rich in calcium.

Lots of other animals, when they find these, will...

-get the calcium from them.

-They will chew on them, will they?

-Exactly.

It must take an enormous amount of energy, of feed, to grow this, every year?

It's the most extraordinary feat. It's like us growing an extra arm every year!

Exactly. It takes a tremendous strain on the entire body really.

Now, at this moment, I'm feeding these stags that have cast, hoping

just to get them back in good condition

and we're getting grass growing now, which is really good.

And presumably after this rut, and all this breeding that's gone on,

you're going to have some little results soon, are you?

Yes, very much so.

Towards the end of May, beginning of June, we will be expecting a lot of these hinds, the females here,

to be in calf, and what a wonderful time that is.

-It really is.

-These are magnificent.

I suspect there will be a fight amongst the crew as to who gets to take them home.

They will have to fight me first!

Thank you very much indeed.

I'm out in the giraffery with senior warden Bev Evans and Longleat's two dromedary camels.

They're fantastic looking creatures, aren't they?

Are you particularly fond of these two?

Kind of. Caroline especially, this one here, can be quite temperamental

but when they are being friendly...

Are they prone to being particularly grumpy?

Caroline is, but they get over-excitable as well.

They can race around flailing their legs around.

It can be quite dangerous.

Is it true that they spit at you?

They can do, yes. We do find that our camels don't generally spit.

-It's more our llamas we have problems with.

-The other one is...?

-Vera.

-What about Vera?

Does Vera have a unique personality?

She is a little bit more laid-back than Caroline.

If they are squabbling, it's normally Caroline who starts it off.

Fantastic. Thank you very much.

Here's what's still to come on today's programme.

Will there be skin and hair flying when Dad and daughter

come face-to-face for the first time?

We'll meet the rodent who's like a mad cross between a rabbit, a rat, and a goodness knows what!

And the otter pups will have to be quick if they ever want to try something tasty.

But first, we're going back up to lion country where it's been a couple of days since young Malaika

had her first experience of the great outdoors.

Don't go up there!

There's nothing up there for you.

You can't get out that way.

After a shaky start, she soon began to appreciate the joys of freedom.

Now, keeper, Bob Trollope, wants to go to the next stage

to introduce Malaika and her dad, Kabir, face-to-face.

Up to now, for the safety of the cub, they've been kept in separate pens.

What's going to happen now is, we're going to open up the side and let Kabir out with them.

At the moment anything could happen, really.

Even though they've been next to each other in the house,

when they can actually get to each other, you don't know what's going to happen.

You've got to be prepared for the fact that Kabir could kill the cub.

In the wild, the pride male's natural instinct is to kill the cubs of rival males.

Kabir has not had a proper chance to bond with Malaika, so it's possible

that he may not recognise her as his daughter.

Hello, darlings. Oh, you look messy.

If Kabir attacks the cub, her mother, Yendi, will try to defend her baby.

But the male of the species is a fearsome beast.

KABIR GROWLS

If Kabir and Yendi did get into a scrap, obviously, Kabir is a big animal.

He's much more powerful than her.

But at least with Malaika out there it will give her something to fight for.

It will give her a bit of spirit. I've seen lionesses see males off

several times.

If it got into a thing where they were just locked on to each other

and they were fighting, unfortunately, I would put money on him.

Are we... Are we ready, are we?

All right, all right.

This is the moment of truth.

Everyone ready? Right?

Come on, mate. Good boy. Good boy.

Come and see your daughter.

KEEPER LAUGHS

Come on, Kabir. Come on, mate.

I think they all met, but...

..Malaika took it out on Mum. Kabir's just turned round and walked back in.

No, he's coming back out now. He does look a bit confused, doesn't he?

He obviously isn't too concerned about Malaika.

No arguments, no scrapping.

No untoward behaviour.

Different animals react in different ways. He's quite laid-back.

Obviously it has an effect on the rest of the family.

If his offspring are going to be as relaxed as him, I think we'll

have an easy time of it.

But there are more introductions still to come.

Kabir's other daughter, Jasira, has yet to meet the rest of the family.

We will be there to see that later in the series.

It's a good thing that this isn't smell-o-vision.

Because there's a powerful pong in the rhino yard.

But it's the actual droppings that have brought head of Pets' Corner, Darren Beasley, here.

His African dung beetle, Hercules, has been disdaining dung in favour of fruit.

So Darren's hoping to tempt him with something really fresh and full of flavour.

If he can get his hands on it.

I do my best to avoid big things like this.

He's a good-looking brute, isn't he?

-This is a lucky old boy. He's from the free lot from South Africa.

-Can I touch him?

-No, that's fine.

Isn't that weird?

I've come out for some nice droppings, yeah...

-Blue Peter jobbie, here's one he made earlier!

-Goodness gracious.

Well I've got my little pot.

Do you think I will need a bigger pot?

I just want a little bit. I'll put some gloves on, because I don't do rhino poo, normally.

Is it safe to lean in and get that?

-It's safer up there.

-When they're up there?

-The electric's off. I'll switch that off.

-You shout me, then.

I'm going to have a rummage. I want to make sure there's nothing living in there already.

I don't want to introduce any beetles or larvae into my little chap, my little dung beetle.

-It's just like he hasn't eaten it.

-Chewed up grass, really.

I can hear him coming!

-Just squeeze in a bit.

-All right, mate?

He's come for a stroke.

-He likes being stroked.

-He's come to see what I'm doing with his toilet.

These guys, these are the giants of the African plain.

These do all the grazing and all the toilet and then

my little chap, my little dung beetle, he does all the clearing up.

And you can imagine, in all seriousness,

if this amount of animals... OK, sadly, due to poaching, there's not many rhinos left,

but you think about the zebra and all the antelope, if their toilet wasn't cleaned up,

you wouldn't see Africa, would you?

After millions of years, it would be a big pile of poo everywhere.

We'll find out later whether Hercules is tempted by Darren's tasty takeaway from the rhino diner.

Not all of the creatures in the safari park have been introduced from far-flung continents.

There are some natives of Wiltshire here, too. They also need to be encouraged and looked after.

I'm out in Wallaby Wood with head of section, Andy Hayton.

Surely these peanuts in this feeder are not for wallabies, Andy?

Absolutely not. No.

We're trying, and quite successfully, actually, bringing in and looking after the more

native species, as well as all the exotic stuff we have here.

Fantastic. I mean, Longleat has got fantastic birds around here.

Have you noticed in and around your areas that you look after, how many birds there are?

Yeah, I mean, we've got quite a lot in here and we're just trying to

-give them a little extra helping hand.

-So this one is living up...

Just hung up on here.

Oh, that's looks home-made, Andy.

Is this a little talent that I didn't know you had?

A little talent with a chain saw.

I actually made those with chain saws, and the bird boxes as well

that we made, we did with chain saws.

Absolutely brilliant. I mean this is a great area for birds, and for wildlife.

But having the wallabies, presumably that's not going to bother native species like the birds?

Absolutely not. In fact, it's a bonus cos nobody comes up this end of the wallaby paddock

apart from us. Only last night Mark told me that he saw a barn owl

-flying through the giraffe reserve.

-Through here?

-Yeah, over the mound, the public area.

-Fantastic!

We've got a resident kestrel as well that often sits on the fence

-and sits in the shelter for the giraffe.

-Lots of jackdaw of course that we can hear.

Jackdaws that steal the monkey food and the wallaby food and everything else.

And we've got Mark Beardshaw up a ladder, one of the keepers here. Hi, Mark. What are you up to?

-We're just about to put one of these bird boxes up.

-Oh, let's have a look.

Another home-made effort.

-Yeah.

-I tell you, you giraffery boys could set up a cottage industry. Fantastic.

Again built with a chain saw?

-Yeah, built with mine and Andy's fair hands.

-Brilliant.

So a little hole in there.

What sort of birds are you hoping are going to be attracted into a box like this, with this sort of design?

Primarily we're trying to get the smaller birds, smaller species such as the tits, the blue tits,

great tits and things like that, because around here, the jackdaws have got the monopoly.

-On the trees...

-Yeah.

-And are you just feeding peanuts or are you doing any other mixed foods?

We're doing peanuts at the moment but if it's successful and the more we look into it,

we'll start feeding different things to encourage different types of birds in.

And the great things is obviously, you know as Spring progresses and birds are breeding, what you

need to think about is soft food, things like meal worms,

which is much better for chicks rather than the peanuts.

So there you are, that's your next task with the chain saw.

-Right, OK.

-Come up with the meal worm feeder. Shall we hang this up?

-Yes.

-So have you thought about particularly

where you're hanging them on the trees and in the reserve?

What sort of considerations do you have?

We don't want the boxes too close together because

they do sort of have a territory, especially the robins in the winter.

And they will fight if the bird boxes are put too close together.

-They can get quite vicious, robins, can't they?

-Yeah.

So we're putting this on the north face of the tree,

out of the prevailing wind and obviously so the sunshine doesn't hit it too much.

-And they don't boil.

-Yes, we don't want them getting too hot in there.

That looks perfect up there.

Are you all right holding all that?

I think I will be.

Well, good luck to both of you.

I shall be out with my binoculars, seeing the results.

-Mark, Andy, thank you very much indeed.

-No problem.

Down in Pets' Corner, the two otter pups are now 11 weeks old, though it's only in the last three

weeks that they've been coming to play outside, along with Mum and Dad Rosie and Romeo.

The babies are growing fast, and the time has come to find out if they're ready for solid food.

But here at Longleat, it's been over 30 years

since they last had otter pups, so no-one's too sure about how to go about it, or what they'd like.

It's going to be a case of trial and error, and keeper Rob Savin is going to start with raw meat and peanuts.

I've got some tasty morsels. They don't look too tasty to me but

I'm going to see what these little ones want to eat.

It's obviously the first real time they're going to be accepting proper food now,

and we want to see if they're going to eat on their own, of if one of parents is going to share with them.

I don't think Rosie is much of a sharer so what we're going to do,

is we're going to see if we can get her up and out of the way.

We've put some food down there.

Yes, she's wanting some food over there.

What I'm going to try and do is put some food up here as well.

Oh no, she's found that already.

We've got Romeo out of the way but we'll get...

Rosie out over there and hopefully, Romeo's going to do a bit of sharing.

I've got a little bit of meat.

No. She's definitely not sharing her food,

which isn't too good but hopefully Dad will do the honours with that.

Rosie has always been keen on her food, so this is tricky.

The pups need to learn to eat, but they'll have to do it before Mum scoffs everything in sight.

It's really going to be a game at the minute just to see what they're eating, who's giving it to them

and how they're getting on with it because they might struggle with a few things being so little so far.

Until they get a bit bigger, a bit stronger, then they might start fending their food off Mum.

This was supposed to be the pups' first meal.

But they hardly got a chance to get near it.

Rob's going to have to try something else.

What we really want to see is them actually eating their food on their own,

fighting off Mum and Dad a little bit and saying, "Hey, this is mine, I'm going to eat this." So...

trial and error.

Rob's going to have to try to feed them another way.

Perhaps he can slow Rosie down long enough for the pups to get at least a taste of something yummy.

So the next morning, before the otters are let out of their house,

he's gone into the enclosure with some breakfast.

I like hiding food for the otters.

I don't want to hide it too much so the little ones find it.

But I want to spread the food around, and especially

with something like prawns, it gives them more of an opportunity to eat.

So hopefully,

Mum won't get all the food this time. It's one of their favourites, actually, prawns. They love this.

Obviously they wouldn't necessarily get prawns in the wild.

They'd eat a combination of fish, a combination of different crustaceans and invertebrates

and things like that, insects.

And they love them. They love them. I love them to be honest.

Hopefully, the babies are going to take on straight to it,

and it's a nice easy soft food for them to get their teeth into.

As I was hoping for, they all came out and because there was so many,

I could see Mum straightaway trying to gather as much as she could and run in.

She was thinking, "Oh my God, there's loads of food, I want it all." But it gave them

the opportunity because they were everywhere, the prawns.

They all had a munch. I saw the babies eating. It was fantastic.

What I want to try now is just to see the varieties, make sure they're getting a good

variety of food. It's all good and well that they're having prawns and it's lovely to see them eating, but

we want to make sure they're eating some substantial things, and a big variety of food that we offer them,

so that the meat, the chicks, the swan muscles, the eggs, all sorts.

And we'll build on this and hopefully it'll be good.

But so far, I'm really happy.

So the pups still have a lot of growing to do.

And we'll be following their progress later in the series.

I'm in the chinchilla house with keeper Bev Allen,

and you've got some intriguing looking things in there

that I wouldn't think of as being classic chinchilla food.

No. What we've got here, we've got cuttlefish, which we give to the chinchillas to chew on, to gnaw on.

-Really?

-Really good for their teeth and good calcium as well.

So we give that to them.

Which sometimes they really do like and...

they're going to run away.

-Shall I put one over here as well?

-Yeah.

This just... This is basically the skeleton of a cuttlefish?

It is, yes. And it's quite soft on this side and what they do,

they do actually like it a lot,

and they just munch away on it

-and it keeps the teeth nice and not too long and everything.

-Yes.

-But we also give them branches as well, that you can see in the enclosure here.

-Right.

You've got to be careful what sort of branches and logs that you do use.

-Hazel, willow, applewood as well.

-Those are good, are they?

Yes, they're the good ones that we use.

Also hay, they need lots of hay for their teeth as well, because when they're gnawing and chewing,

the action of the teeth helps to grind down the teeth, so that's really good for them.

Are they rodents?

They are rodents as such, yes.

So the teeth constantly grows and you have to have a strict diet, so we've got the chinchilla pellets.

So are these sort of full of special chinchilla-type of vitamins and minerals?

That's it, vitamins, minerals, all the nutrients that they need in their diet.

What would they eat in the wild? Cos they do live in what you

would imagine to be quite kind of arid areas with not much at all.

-They do live at the top of mountains, don't they?

-Yes.

They live quite high up in the Andes and they would actually eat

grasses up there. Cactus fruits as well, and actually they get all their

-water from the dew off the grasses and things like that.

-So they don't need very much?

-You've got water in here obviously, but they're not big drinkers?

-Not as such.

You have to offer it to them but they don't drink a lot,

and also as a treat you can give them peanuts, which they like.

And you can give them a bit of apple and a bit of green food, but not too much, only as a treat now and then.

-Right. It makes their tummies go funny, does it?

-Yes,

we don't want that.

No. I can't imagine this lot with funny tummies, wouldn't be fun.

I was just looking down here.

You've got what looks like a sand pit.

Oh, yes. The sand bath.

They actually sort of roll in it because they've got such dense fur

because where they're up in the Andes it's cold, so they need the fur to keep them warm.

They don't like water to bath in, so they have the dust to bath in.

So they'll roll about in that and that basically cleans the fur?

Yes, cleans the fur, and keeps it all nice and clean.

And usually they don't actually get any fleas or anything because the fur is so dense they don't like it.

How amazing!

They are the most hilarious looking creatures,

and when they run like that, they're incredibly quick as well, aren't they?

Very agile across the rocks.

They're quite fast. You can't hold a chinchilla for too long.

Oh, hang on, I'm just going to stop that one because he's chewing a cable. Come on, off the cable!

You can't chew that.

That's another thing you've got to be careful about - chewing cables.

If you have one at home, you've got to be aware they will chew absolutely anything.

-As you can see, they've been chewing the walls as well.

-They have! They've been chewing their mural.

Yeah, anything they can chew, they will chew.

Quite destructive animals, really.

They are fantastic, though, and I just love the way they look.

They look like a sort of mad cross between a rabbit and a

-rat and a guinea pig all rolled into one, don't they?

-They do.

They're brilliant. Bev, thank you.

-It is lovely to see them. Shall we...?

-Yes, give them some treats.

Here you are, guys. Thanks for letting us in.

Back in Pets' Corner, head of section Darren Beasley

is about to serve lunch to his African dung beetle, Hercules.

Until now, Hercules has shown a distinct preference for fruit, which

is fine from a nutritional point of view, but since these beetles dine on

dung in the wild, Darren's offering him what should be a gourmet treat - fresh rhino droppings.

I'm just going to pick him up from his water bottle.

Come on, my old fruit.

There we are. I'll leave him on the surface, just for a moment.

I expect these little tentacles here, these little antennae, they're what's sensing the smell.

It certainly does whiff.

If he's at all interested in this dung, and I'm going to be proved wrong, then he should...

If I put some of this down...

Oh, the things I do for these wee beasties.

Warm and wet. There you are, my friend.

What Hercules should be doing now is he should be racing towards this big pile of damp dung,

because obviously he would eat that in the wild.

He wouldn't eat all the grass and hay fibres.

What they do is rather horrible, I'm afraid.

They get big mouthfuls and they slurp up the juice of the poo.

I can't imagine why, but Hercules seems to have lost his appetite.

In Africa, these beetles not only eat dung

but they also use it as part of a mating ritual, rolling it into balls.

I've got a home-made dung ball here.

There we are. He would make something almost as big as that,

actually, for this particular one.

What he would do is he would rear up and he'd push this around.

He'd find himself a lady dung beetle, and he would offer it to her.

If she liked him, she would go off and they would roll the dung off into the sunset and bury it.

That's where they lay their eggs.

Oh, he's just literally climbing on it now,

but I'm going to have to watch closely.

I don't think he's going to eat it.

No, he is just walking over the top of it.

What he's doing is it's just an interesting object, so he's just

going to walk on round it. He's not that bothered.

At the moment, as you can see here,

he is walking away from it.

It does smell. I don't blame him.

He is probably try to get as far away from there as possible!

So, despite all Darren's efforts, it looks like Hercules will be sticking with soft fruit after all.

But Darren's hatching a new plan.

It may be, perhaps, because he hasn't got a female to impress.

He has got an alternative food supply in the fresh fruit, but he doesn't want to roll

the dung balls because he hasn't got a girlfriend to roll the dung ball to.

What we would like to do now is, we would like to get some more dung beetles,

but one really would be good for a start,

to pair up with this old fellow.

And you never know, if he did roll a ball of dung, and he did dig a hole, or eat dung,

it would be interesting to see, it's interesting for us to talk about,

so our next stage, hopefully, we are going to get some more dung beetles and make it a bit more interesting

and a bit more lively, so we don't have the world's only fruit-eating dung beetle in our collection!

It's the end of day here at the giraffery, and Kate and I have come up to join

head of section Andy with a spot of feeding. What have we got in the buckets?

This is their veg ration that we give them

every evening in winter, just so there's a nice bit of green food.

-This is presumably swede.

-Swede, yes...

-How do you know giraffes like swede - trial and error?

-Cos it's all gone in the morning!

-Fair enough!

-Can't say fairer than that.

So, why do you need to do this?

Presumably they're eating grass during the day?

In winter, there's not a lot of grass around, so we supplement their diet with some nice fresh green food

such as cabbage and swede. In summer we'll knock this feed off.

They're grazing out in the park - we've got such a big area out there,

and we'll cut and browse for them daily as well.

So, why do they have to come in in the winter?

Wouldn't it be easier just to leave them in the park and take out the supplementary food like this?

There's no goodness in the grass this time of year anyway.

It would be lovely to leave them out because we wouldn't have to clean up in the morning,

but it's the cold. It is so cold.

There's quite a large surface area on a giraffe,

-and they lose heat quickly because they are big.

-Right.

It's just too harsh. And it's a security thing as well.

If something scares them in the middle of the night,

even in summer or whatever, we don't know what's going on.

When they're in here, they're here, we know where everybody is and

everybody is fine and locked away quite nicely.

It is security for them.

Presumably it's a good chance to check them over as well for

any injuries that they might have picked up during the day.

You can monitor them, have a look at them in the morning,

and if there's food left in here, especially with the ones that are individually boxed,

if there's food left, you know it's left and you can start looking for things.

So you know immediately there's something wrong.

And presumably, this is a perfect opportunity to check that each gets an equal amount of food.

Exactly, you can watch. It's nice with these guys

because when they feed at night, they all sit down.

You look in the troughs and there's still food left,

so you know everybody is getting what they need.

-And is there a particularly greedy giraffe amongst them?

-Jolly.

Jolly is actually down at the bottom.

Jolly is on her own. She's in there with a youngster.

But she thinks with her belly, not her brain.

I'm going to do a bucket swap.

Yeah, we've got a few more things to feed here.

We'll leave them in peace to enjoy their supper.

Andy, thank you very much indeed.

Sadly, that's all we've got time for on today's Animal Park,

but here's what's coming up on the next programme.

It looks like there's a baby tapir on the way.

Quite honestly, she's showing all the signs of being pretty imminent, she's got a huge udder...

It's touch and go as Gladys the iguana undergoes radical surgery.

Come on, sweetie, we need you to breathe.

-And, romance gets hot and heavy for this horny old rhino.

-Oh, here we go.

-Wow, what a reaction!

-That's explosive, isn't it?

Wow! We'll have all that and more on the next Animal Park.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd, 2006

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