Original subtitles

Famous the world over, Sydney Harbour is home to some of Australia's most iconic

landmarks and one of the world's most celebrated zoos.

Throughout its 101 -year history, there's never been a more exciting time

granted access to both of Taronga Zoo's locations.

From caring for a single animal... Just hang on to him and keep calm. ...to

saving an entire species.

She's a gorgeous little frog and one of our most critically endangered.

We'll take you inside Taronga.

On this episode, when Charlie met Nala.

She's going to come down and have a play date with him.

But will this blind date result in a sea lion puff?

We are hoping that they are going to absolutely love each other from the get

-go, but it's not always the case.

103 years old and... Still going strong.

She's seen it all. She's right in her prime, really. A surprise birthday party

for the zoo's oldest resident.

Final finishing touches. She's going to love it.

And the dangerous business of x -raying a snake.

Their venom can knock out 100 full -grown men.

Gaining the animal's trust is an important part of every keeper's job.

Come on, Jim. Station.

Come on.

Good.

It's called conditioning, and it helps staff get up close and take care of

animals if they're suffering from health problems.

Well, our male Komodo Naga is lame.

We're going to try to take some x -rays.

to see if there's any orthopedic problems.

It's also used to help train animals to interact with keepers in a safe manner.

Hello. Want to do a session?

And down at the seal enclosure, keepers are using these techniques to help with

their important sea lion breeding program.

Hello. Tani.

Crystal's been working with Nala, our Australian sea lion, on training her for

ultrasound so we can check on any potential pups.

So Nala's already in.

Nala, let's go.

This is Nala and she's a 10 -year -old Australian sea lion. She was born here

the zoo. She's been my favourite amongst us all. She's absolutely amazing.

Australian sea lions are the only seal species that lives in Australia. They're

found off the coast of southern and western Australia, and their numbers are

really, really low. They're a highly endangered species, so the more we can

a lovely breeding population here, the better it is for the species as a whole.

Her safe place is the water, so we always want to give her a lot of room.

makes her feel a bit safer. She can just go to the water if she feels

uncomfortable at any time.

And if she doesn't want to participate, we won't push it at all. We want this to

be really positive.

Today, Lindsay's not only training Nala, she's also teaching Keeper Crystal a

few tricks.

Hi, Nala. Be good.

So you just let me know when you'd like me to come in? Yep. We have her up on

here so that we can get this pretend ultrasound probe to simulate what the

one would be like. Yep. All right, Nala.

You're right to come in, Nala. Coming in, Nala.

Coming in. Here I am. Touching. Touch.

Monitoring any future pregnancy is an important requirement so vets can

intervene should something go wrong.

Excellent. Nice work, Nala.

Luckily for Keepers, Nala is an excellent student.

Nala absolutely loves to learn. She's very cooperative and very switched on,

very intelligent.

She's all comfortable on your end? She's really relaxed. So what we want to do

is maybe we'll bridge soon, do a short one.

So as soon as you bridge, I'll pull away. Good girl.

So that bridge just tells Nala that she's done the right thing and that fish

on the way.

If you want to give her a break at any time too, that's quite okay.

Good girl.

One of the harder things for seals is to stay still, so we like to break it up

with a bit of energetic stuff as well.

Bring it back if you're okay.

Okay. Then we might just try for a bit of a longer one, maybe not quite as long

as what we were trying for before.

Ready? Here we go.

Touching.

Maybe sort of a decent length, but not as long as what we were pushing for

before. And then we'll probably leave it at that, I think. Yep. She's done

really well.

Good girl.

Good job, sweetie.

All right. Might leave it there. Cool.

While the ultrasound training went off without a hitch, Keepers are hopeful her

upcoming introduction to the male sea lion, Charlie, goes just as smoothly.

Stay there, Nala.

Good girl.

The playful sea lions have a great relationship with their keepers.

But on the other side of the zoo lives a collection of animals that could kill

their keepers in a heartbeat.

A fact never too far from Keeper Chris's mind.

So this is our off -display venomous snake holding room. This is where we

all of our venomous snakes when we're not housing them on display.

At the zoo, we have about a dozen or so venomous snakes.

Most of those are native Australian.

The local snakes may be more venomous, but the most recognisable snake comes

from Southeast Asia.

So in this enclosure here, we have a monocled cobra.

Isn't that quite a vocal snake?

This species of snake would be responsible for hundreds if not

deaths every year.

Their venom is quite toxic and they're not afraid to inject it.

But what it's made up of is largely neurotoxins that very quickly stop our

neurons firing in our nervous system. So that can mean that the heart stops

beating, the lungs stop breathing, and all of those little neurological

processes can break down very, very quickly.

So we've got an interesting little snake in here.

This is a species of snake that not many people know about.

Now this here is called a broad -headed snake.

It is another venomous snake.

And it just goes to show that in Australia, it's not just the big

snakes that we need to be aware of.

It's these smaller cryptic ones that still pack a punch.

The broad -headed snake has a few records of human death.

There isn't a specific broad -headed snake antivenom, but tiger snake

has shown to be effective to treat bites of this species.

But up the other end of the room... lives the most venomous snake of all.

So in here, we've got a species of snake that plenty of people have heard of

before and never had the privilege of seeing.

But they're a very beautiful snake.

These guys are at the top of their game. Inland Taipan.

Considered the world's most toxic land snake.

We've got three in this enclosure.

We've got two boys and a female.

They're only found in western Queensland and parts of South Australia.

So their venom is said to pack the punch, whereby one bite

can be enough to knock out 200 ,000 mice and

approximately 100 full -grown men in an individual bite.

Others right up there in the count would be the eastern brown snake and the

tiger snake.

And those two species have been distributed to probably most Australian

bites in venomation.

Whereas this species is simply encountered far less frequently than the

If you see any snake here in Australia, you're really best standing still,

letting the snake pass you by.

If you're far enough away from it, it's safe to walk away.

But definitely don't try to catch a snake. Definitely don't try to kill the

snake. Just enjoy the moment that you've had with the snake, if you can contain

yourself enough to.

And then, as I said, if it's in your house or in your yard.

to definitely call a trained professional to come and safely remove

Thankfully, not all snakes at Taronga are stone -cold killers.

Like Olive, the olive python.

Found all across northern Australia, these gentle giants can grow up to four

metres in length.

But Olive has a history of chronic back pain, which is getting worse.

And when your back is more than three meters long, the question is, how do you

find where it hurts?

Every year, Taronga welcomes new animals to their family.

Some have just been born, while others have just arrived.

But today, they're celebrating an animal.

that had been around Taronga from almost the start.

Good morning, guys.

Morning, Ezzie.

Hey, Lance, where are you going?

Here, mate.

Here at Taronga, we have two giant tortoises. They are giant Aldabran

This is Lance.

Lance is our male Aldabran tortoise.

Just giving you a bit of a neck scratch at the moment. It's something that...

he appears to like, for use of a better term.

You know, he really tends to stretch his neck out. We really like to get into

all these little nooks and crannies.

The Aldabran tortoises are from the group of islands off the coast of

A lot of people have heard of Galapagos tortoises, but these are the other

existing giant tortoises that are found on the earth today.

As an adult, they don't have any predators really in the wild, but as a

tortoise, there would be several animals that would take them.

Lance would weigh about 180 kilos.

But if he was to walk into any water, he would float like a cork.

The structure in their shell is a honeycomb that has air pockets, so

able to actually bob in the ocean, and that's how they would have inhabited

different islands.

You might notice these lines that are over his shell.

This is one what we refer to as a scute.

Often in snakes and lizards, we have individual scales.

Tortoises and turtles, they have individual scutes. And these will shed

the tortoise is growing larger.

The skin on the Aldabra tortoise is so tough and so leathery, it's to make sure

it's not getting damaged by the harsh land that they're living in. It really

a very strong leather. It's just like, it's stronger than your boots.

You hungry this morning?

I tend to work a lot with snakes. It can be a bit, you know, a bit whippy and

these guys are very controlled.

Good girl.

and they just go about their business just slowly and steadily.

They're not an aggressive animal, very easy to feed, and no real hazards when

comes to them. But if we think that the Aldabra is getting too close, you just

take a step to the left or the right, and it takes them 10 minutes to reach

anyway, so you're out of danger.

Now, Lance is a sort of a young bloke. He's at approximately 70 years of age.

And Esmeralda, she's the old dame of the zoo.

She would have arrived here in the zoo in the 40s, just after World War II.

They do guesstimate that some giant tortoises can live to be 200 years of

So she might only be in that middle age, so she's right in her prime, really.

And with her birthday just around the corner, the keepers have a very special

surprise for this 103 -year -old dame.

Olive the python has a history of chronic back pain, which is getting

But when your back is more than three metres long, it's a hard thing to

So it's off to the animal hospital for some urgent x -rays.

She has had some x -rays in the past that have not looked great, but we just

want to check that she is in the best condition possible and she's doing well

for her age. So hopefully the x -rays come back good and there's no further

spinal changes for her.

Now, I don't know what her personality is like. I don't know if she's bitey.

I'll just treat her like a wild snake.

We've got a 17 -year -old olive python, and Liz is going to restrain her while I

inject her to start off her anaesthetic so that we can radiograph her.

Harmless or not, the team know whenever you're handling a snake of this size,

you can never let your guard down.

A 10 kilo python is extremely strong.

So the way that they get their prey is they constrict them.

This is 10 kilos of muscle.

So yeah, it's not so much her bitey bits, it's more her wrapping herself

And 10 kilos doesn't seem that big, but in a python it's quite hefty.

My love.

See how she's...

Quite strong.

She's bending the needle.

Okay, that'll do for now. That will sedate her somewhat.

So the time is 10 .49.

A couple of years ago she had her spine x -rayed and in her neck region in a

snake, she had some changes on her x -ray where her spine had

extra bone in it and it was quite stiff.

The team are hoping that today's X -rays show no further deterioration, but

judging by Olive's recent behavior, they fear the worst.

Esmeralda, the giant Aldabra tortoise, is the oldest resident of Taronga.

She's been at the zoo since just after World War II.

Being here at the zoo for over 70 years, I think Esmeralda would have met more

people than any other animal here at the zoo.

She's met politicians, movie stars, music stars, sports people.

She's seen it all. She's met all the VIPs.

I mean, I remember visiting the zoo as a young bloke and I can specifically

remember seeing Esmeralda because she always had a different shell to the

tortoises that were in the exhibit. So I have fond memories of Esmeralda as a

young boy, definitely.

And today, Esmeralda turns 103.

So Stu has organised the nutritionist team to make something to celebrate the

occasion.

Quite a concoction, I think.

Very colourful, very full, lots of green, leafy vegetables. All the

families here, tomatoes on the side, peas, broccoli.

Capsicum. Yeah, and beautiful squash and tomato shaped in flowers.

Very, very exciting.

And head chef is Michelle Shaw, Australia's first and only zoo

Okay, final finishing touches.

Does it look good?

She's going to love it. So this is the birthday cake for a wonderful animal.

special animal this cake is based on her natural diet but we've just designed it

in a way that's special for her so she might get this variety of vegetable

times a week she gets meadow hay which we've made the base of the cake yeah for

and that's a really good high fiber thing we've got her her carrot handle

idea oh good look at that oh oh okay we're ready to go

Gosh, I'm going to be thrilled. I can't wait. I'm salivating just thinking about

it. And like all great surprise parties, Esmeralda has no idea.

Taronga Zoo is taking part in a breeding program designed to boost numbers of

the endangered Australian sea lion.

And the first female this season to be mated is one of the marine team's

favorites. Nala.

She's absolutely amazing.

She loves learning new things. She's so playful.

Nala is being paired with Charlie, who's waiting patiently in another pool at

the opposite end of the marine precinct.

And the two couldn't be more different.

Nali here weighs about 60 kilos, whereas her boyfriend Charlie weighs about

260.

What would you like to check with Charlie today?

We'll just do his general checks. We'll just double check those gums where he

had those little scratches and that scratch on his flipper. Okay. Make sure

healing up.

Before they breed, animals at Taronga must be in good health, so Charlie needs

to undergo a quick physical exam.

Charlie,

Brock.

Good boy.

All right, Brad, what I might do is I'll put him in the

water.

In the water.

Charlie, water.

Water.

Luckily, Charlie is as well -behaved as Nala because you can't give a 300 -kilo

sea lion a health check if he doesn't want one.

Hello, big fella.

Would you like to come out?

Good.

That's it.

Come over here, big boy.

I love everything about Charlie.

The giant sea lions are one of my most favourite animals in the entire world.

I've been working with them for 23 years.

He's big.

He's gorgeous.

He's just like a big, wet dog.

Have a look at the gums for us. Check his mouth? Okay.

Just checking behind the two lower canines where he had a little rub mark.

Checking that worn down a bit there, Brad.

Charlie plays quite rough with toys, and so we just keep an eye on his feet. He

had a little scratch on one of his gums earlier this week, but it's all healed

up and pretty much gone.

Good boy.

That's it.

Over.

We want them to be comfortable being touched all over, so the vets need to

a look at them. But it also gives us an opportunity to see if there's any

tenderness or, you know, if we see a different response from day to day, we

that potentially there could be a problem. But this is all part of their

conditioning. We want them to be pretty much bomb -proof in all of their health

care. I think someone was mentioning you had some rate marks on his flippers,

Brad.

All right. On the rear one?

These rear flippers here are unique in the fact that a lot of people are

surprised by these little nails that they have.

And these are used for grooming that fur coat.

So exposing them by bending the rear flippers over exposes them. They can

and scratch pretty much most of their body with them.

Oh, nothing to that? Good.

It's all good news for Charlie.

and he's been given a clean bill of health.

So Nala, our beautiful female Australian sea lion, about the quarter of size of

Charlie, is going to come down and have a play date with him. They will spend

maybe the day, sometimes overnight, depending on how they're both feeling,

because we're hoping that they will contribute to our Australian sea lion

breeding program.

With date night looming, the question is, will Charlie and Nala find love?

Esmeralda the giant tortoise is turning 103 and Taronga staff have organised a

surprise for her.

We're so happy to see you two.

That looks amazing.

I'll jump over if you guys want to pass it over to me.

Esmeralda has been here the longest amount of time, more than any other

here at Taronga and so for that we are going to give her a special treat. We're

going to do something special for her.

Happy birthday, Esmeralda.

Happy 103rd birthday, Stewie. 103rd birthday for Esmeralda. You know what?

doesn't look a day over 95, to be honest.

We do like to put on a special sort of celebration for these milestone times,

but especially for our very iconic animals. And Esmeralda is one of our

iconic species in the reptile department.

Real variety today.

Oh, yeah.

Endive and broccoli and... Beautiful hibiscus flowers, one of their

Which is one of the best foods for them as well.

Hibiscus flowers, yeah. Definitely.

Esmeralda came to the zoo in 1947 and her diet previous to that would have

you know, she would have been having a natural diet, really high fibre plants

and things.

Coming into a zoo environment, she would have received really high fruit diets

in the past, and they would love it, but it's like us eating chocolate every

single day, right? So it causes them to have digestive upset, they get really

gassy and bloated. But, you know, we've learned a lot about nutrition in the

last hundred years.

She's absolutely loving that celery, isn't she? Absolutely. Listen to that

crunch. Yeah.

It's a very happy day for her.

But, you know, I don't think we can say this is the happiest birthday for her.

Next year might be better.

We always think next year's going to be better. But now you've set a standard.

So next year we're going to expect more. And the year after that, more.

So just be careful.

Many happy returns, Esmeralda.

Olive, the olive python, was brought to the animal hospital with chronic back

pain. Now it's a waiting game as the anaesthetic takes effect.

Let's have another look.

So it's been 15, 16 minutes.

Still there.

We are concerned about her and we've had some other snakes with similar issues.

So once they have this...

Syndrome, it tends to progress and then to the point where they can't move very

well at all.

Well, not all, not all.

She's a little bit, yeah, she's quite sedated, but she can't support her own

head. Okay. But she's trying to, so I reckon we can try and get her out.

As with any spinal injury, the staff know they must handle Olive with great

care. Big girl.

I feel heavier than 10 kilos.

Liz is going to change sides, and I'm going to intubate her.

There's a lot of snakes.

You may have to hang on to the back. You can see that there's lots of very, very

fine teeth.

Their teeth are quite sharp, and they're all very fine, just like fish bones.

If you get bitten, it'll be quite painful.

There we go. Beautiful.

Very snug.

Every part of this procedure takes great skill.

So what we're going to do now is connect her up to the anesthetic machine, put

the anesthetic gas, see her tongue coming on.

Shall we turn her just to find her heart and then we can put the Doppler on her?

Yes.

We're going to look along here, around this area, to look for her heart and

I'm going to attach the Doppler to it because you can't use a stethoscope to

hear it.

And this is a good way of monitoring her anaesthesia. So we need to make sure

she's breathing and we need to make sure her heart is, of course, going.

I reckon it must be around here.

Actually, I'll turn her up.

There you go.

That's her heart beating.

The heart rate sounds really good.

Nice and steady.

Take that off.

It's always nice to hear the heart.

Okay, so we're going to take her in and weigh her.

It's rare that Olive has been sedated, so the team take full advantage while

sleeps. She's 10 .9 kilos, and we'll take her back. Yep, measure her. Measure

her. Straight out along the floor.

We're measuring her just for the records because snakes keep growing, so for

data, but also to assess her body condition compared to what a wild snake

be. It'll be long, won't it?

130 at her bed.

Importantly, the team now know Olive's exact weight and length.

What they don't know is which part of her three -metre spine is injured.

Like the huge collection of animals on display, Taronga's staff come from all

walks of life.

Oh, I lost it. Come on.

Get it.

I've never really liked seafood, even from a young age. I absolutely hated the

smell of it, and now here I am, elbows deep in seafood every day.

But I'm just really lucky. I feel really lucky to be able to work with these

incredible animals every day and inspire visitors about how important they are

and the ocean they live in.

So for me, I'm an ungulate keeper. So an ungulate is just a fancy name for a

hoof mammal.

So here at Taronga Zoo, I'm looking after the bongo.

I look after giraffes and I also look after pygmy hippos.

I used to work, funny enough, as a butcher before I started as a zookeeper.

A butcher to working at the zoo, but I can tell you what, I know I cut a meat

like you wouldn't believe.

I'm very green in regards to the environment, but at the end of the day,

still a carnivore. I like to eat meat.

Saying that I'm a butcher has no disrespect to the animals or the

It just means that I know them more inside and out than other keepers, you

Erica, can you release that for us?

I was one of those annoying little girls when I was sort of two or three years

old was determined to be a vet. But I don't think, you know, certainly not at

that stage and not even through vet school imagined that I'd be lucky enough

work in a zoo. But I've always been interested in wildlife.

I feel really, really lucky to be working in an environment like this.

a great zoo, so very lucky.

You wouldn't want those teeth sinking into anything other than a nice piece of

fruit.

Best job in the world, hands down. I guess most people, it's just a reaction

oh, wow, that's so cool.

People are, yeah, pretty impressed, but we're very lucky.

This meerkat just here, his name is Kumo. He's actually part of our largest

litter. We had six meerkats in a litter, and he's what I call a pickpocketer. So

any time you sit down in the exhibit, he loves to come up and explore what's in

your pocket. If you ever have a pen, your pen will only last a few seconds in

your pocket before he's scratched it out.

He's pretty disappointed, I think, because I don't have a pen today.

We have 18 meerkats, so we have a huge mob here.

I've worked with all but two since the day they were born. So to me, they all

look completely different, believe it or not. But, yeah, to most people,

obviously, they all look exactly the same.

What are you doing?

What is Loise doing?

He's so noisy.

But it's not only the living animals that the team at Taronga care for.

This here is like Taronga's morgue. And what we do every day is conduct

postmortems to find out cause of death of any animals in our care. I think

were some signs early on that I might have been cut out for this job.

I always wanted to be a vet since a little kid.

I didn't think I'd end up working in the postmortem room here.

I knew I was probably going to end up working with the zoo in some way.

I think just having that fascination for animals and a bit of the morbid kind of

gave it away. And how they work, because you can't really determine how an

animal works unless you get right in there.

Here at Taronga Zoo, I'm the supervisor of the reptile amphibian department.

And here in my hand is a little female southern corroboree frog.

She's a gorgeous little frog, one of Australia's most iconic species and one

our most critically endangered.

And at the moment, they're right at the brink of extinction.

There's a lot of interesting quirks about the frogs and also about myself.

one of the interesting things with these little guys is how we survey for them.

We actually yell at the habitat where the frogs are. And if there's a male

sitting in the net, he calls back at us because he thinks we're another male.

He's saying, get away from my girls, get away from my pond, this is my area.

So we give off a real loud, deep, yeah.

And then these little guys give off their little, quack, quack, quack,

back at us.

Yeah.

Quack, quack, quack, quack.

And that's how we know how many there are in the wild, where they're

and so forth.

Back at the wildlife hospital, vets are trying to find the exact position of

Olive's chronic back pain and check if there's been any further damage to her

already painful spine.

She has some changes in her spine, so sort of like arthritis, and it makes the

part of her spine quite stiff in the neck region.

And so we're doing repeat x -rays on her today to ensure that it's not getting

worse.

The reality is... If it is worse, she may not be able to survive.

Okay, so we're going to start the x -ray. Yep. And so you want to go from

first? Yes.

And dorsal ventral? Yes.

Okay.

X -ray.

There's quite a lot of the animal to x -ray, so we have to do a lot more x

on snakes in particular.

So I'm going to put tape on there, so they know where we're going.

At 40 centimetres.

At 40? We just make sure we have our routine down.

and make sure we do it properly, it works out well.

Number two.

Yeah.

Turn her off at the next one. Okay, that's much better. We can go to the

one, number three. Well, we do in this job do a lot of radiographs. That's part

of our diagnostic work.

He's a bit twisted at the front.

Yeah. And that's how we determine, you know, what's wrong with the animal, if

there is anything wrong or not, and we can rule out certain things.

Next x -ray. Yep.

They are a really good diagnostic tool, so really taking them, to me, is quite

interesting.

Yep, that's good.

Good? Yep.

So we've finished taking our radiographs of the python, and so now it's just the

wait for her to recover. We've given her a reversal agent, but she's also had

anaesthetic gas, and so she just needs to metabolise those anaesthetics until

she wakes up, and it can be a number of hours.

and we're giving her the heat because that'll speed up her recovery.

Being a reptile, they can't control their own body temperature, so this is

called a bear hugger. It's full of hot air, and she's also on top of a heat mat

as well, and that will maximise her recovery.

Of course, now I'm going to do a little doona.

Blanky. Got to get her a pillow.

So today's gone really well.

It's always a pleasure to work with a beautiful snake like an olive python

because not many people get to do that. I've got to have a look through the

radiograph to see what kind of changes she has in her spine and if the changes

she had from about four years ago are the same or if they've progressed.

But all will be revealed shortly when I can have a look at her three metres of

spine.

And as the first x -rays come through, it's not looking good for Olive.

really exciting day. We're hoping to introduce Nala, our female Australian

lion, with Charlie, our big male Australian sea lion.

We are hoping that they are going to absolutely love each other from the get

-go, but it's not always the case, so it's going to be exciting to see how

interact with each other and how things go, which is really exciting.

But first, Nala must get to the other end of the marine precinct, and the only

way is to walk.

go? What are we doing?

So it's not a very easy task to get Nala down to Charlie.

Nala's exhibit is at the top of a set of stairs on a completely different level.

Thankfully Nala is trained to walk outside of her exhibit. We take her

regularly for her own enrichment, something different for her to see and

does that quite happily because she enjoys going out for a walk.

Good girl.

What's out here?

Hey.

Who are we going to go see?

She definitely will know what's happening when we get in the proximity

Charlie is. She'll probably smell him before she sees him.

Charlie probably has no idea what's about to happen. He's probably in his

mindset, just enjoying a day in the pool, and all of a sudden a female's

to arrive, so that's going to make him pretty excited.

Nice work. Up you go.

Good girl.

So it's really important for us whenever we introduce two animals, we want to

make sure both animals are happy and comfortable throughout the entire

If they're not comfortable or happy, we simply separate them again and we try

again at another date.

But fortunately for Charlie and Nala, love is definitely in the air and

the water.

The introduction between Charlie and Nala has been as fantastic as we could

imagined. They are both really comfortable in each other's presence.

There's no aggressive behaviour, anything to suggest that it's going to

escalate, which is great.

Definitely feeling the love.

Charlie's even been clucking, which is a natural vocal or sound that the boys

make to let the girls know they're very interested in them, which is really

great for us to hear.

And Nala's been quite receptive to that, so a lot of the nose -to -nose

touching, that's really interesting and great for us to see.

Absolutely stoked that this has gone so well.

It's what we aim to do in the breeding program of this incredibly rare species,

so to see two seals getting along so well with each other really gives us

hopes for our breeding season.

So the loved -up pair will be left overnight for some private time.

Fingers crossed we'll be able to end up with an Australian sea lion pup, which

is the ultimate goal here.

Yesterday, Taronga's vet conducted a series of x -rays on the zoo's 17 -year

-old female olive python.

She recovered from the anaesthetic really well and she was awake, but there

large water body in her enclosure, so we didn't want to send her back to her

enclosure just in case she went swimming overnight and had a nap underwater.

So we allowed her to recover here in the hospital and she's stayed nice and

warm, recovered really beautifully overnight.

She's bright and alert now and we're happy for her to go swimming if she

chooses. And so the reptile keepers are going to come down, collect her and take

her back to their collection.

But first, keeper Emma is keen to get the results of the X -ray, which Gabby

spent the night painstakingly stitching together.

So here's Olive, her radiograph, and we're just going to go down her body and

we'll show you some of the changes that we've found.

So you can see in this radiograph that you've got lots of detail of the

individual vertebrae. So up here you can see a little space between each unit

and then along here they all start to join together and you also get increased

bone development underneath and it's reflected on this view looking down on

back where you get these widening which are called paddle.

It is actually getting worse.

No one really knows what causes this in snakes. It doesn't just happen in

pythons. It happens in venomous snakes like rattlesnakes overseas.

We used to think it was just from handling, but the fact that it's found

in venomous snakes that are not handled very often makes that unlikely.

So what we're going to do with Olive is we're going to put her on a treatment

trial of anti -inflammatories, which is essentially pain relief, and you're

going to monitor how she uses her enclosure.

If she starts moving around with the pain relief on board, that tells me that

she was painful.

If there is no difference, then we may have to consider her quality of life

because we can't help her move around more. If she's just spending all her

in one area and not doing anything, I think it's a welfare issue that we have

consider. So we'll reconvene in about a week if you've finished her medication.

OK.

We're going to pop her back.

It's a sad result for Olive, who's called Taronga home for the last eight

Prognosis for her is not great.

The fact that it's deteriorated over the five years means it's probably going to

continue to do so no matter what we do, unfortunately.

And if her welfare being our primary concern, if we think that her quality of

life... is poor or that she's in any kind of discomfort, then euthanasia will

likely be the end result.

It's been two months since sea lions Charlie and Nala spent a quiet night

together.

So her roof flippers will be here. I can sit here.

Roof flippers will be there.

If possible, it would be better for you to be on this side.

We can shuffle that however you want, just so she's got a clear access to the

water. Vet Larry has come down to her enclosure to conduct the first

to see if the mating encounter was successful.

What is happening out here?

Hey, sweetie.

Hey. Thankfully, we've been doing some training sessions with Nala in

preparation for this in the hopes that we are going to be potentially seeing a

pup today. Fingers crossed. That's the dream.

Hey, beautiful girl.

Good girl.

Ready to go when you are, Larry?

Good girl.

We've got a really good scan of her whole abdomen here. Good job.

Nice work, Larry. She's an incredible animal. I mean, look at her. She's just

perfect.

That's it.

Good girl.

Nothing obvious yet. I mean, I can see organs, her abdominal organs. I've got a

great image of her bladder.

So it'd be good, actually, if we turn her around. Okay. Just this whole set

Yep. So she's facing that way.

With no luck on the right side, Larry is hoping the left -hand side gives him a

better view.

All right, now.

Come on.

No, no.

That's it. That's it. It might be handy if she was the right side, but let's

see. Good girl.

That's it.

It's always exciting, I mean, you know, and always hopeful. And I suppose, you

know, when you don't see something in the back of mine, I'm going...

Have I missed it? Have I missed it? And, you know, there's always hope that

maybe I have. But, oh, hang on a sec.

Just hold on.

And suddenly something catches Larry's eye.

So I'm just scanning her left side of her abdomen, the lower abdomen here, and

just not far from the bladder I just spotted a sort of a circular vesicle.

Okay, so that's a still image.

So that's there.

is very likely to be an embryonic vesicle with the little embryo in it.

So this is very exciting. I think she's pregnant.

Potentially with being something?

Yeah, I'll show you. Are you kidding me? No, I'm not kidding at all. That's

incredible.

Wow. So, you know, that's very typical of what you'd expect of an embryonic

vesicle. And that little spot inside is probably the embryo.

So I've just measured it there and you can see it's only 2 .4 by 3 centimetres.

So it's only small.

Very early days. Pretty good evidence that she's pregnant.

Yay!

I definitely didn't expect it. Obviously we always hope and being this early on

we haven't seen any signs of her being potentially pregnant and obviously you

wouldn't because it's still so early.

But yeah, this is incredible news.

Feline pregnancies are just a few weeks shorter than a human.

So it's still early days.

But Nala's pregnancy is a glimmer of hope for an endangered species.

It's fantastic news, obviously, for Nala and the keepers and us. And so having

this pregnancy and, you know, hopefully a little pup in the future is going to

be a very, very important contribution to the conservation program for this

species.