Original subtitles

Australia is home to one of the world's most iconic zoos, Taronga, stretching

from the shores of Sydney's famous harbour to the vast western plain

zoo in Dubbo.

But in a world that's ever -changing, every single birth we have is vitally

important. One thing always stays the same. There comes a time when you just

have to let go.

The love these teams have.

Two little lion cubs.

For the thousands of animals in their care.

Good boy.

On this episode, precious Minya.

Hi. She doesn't know it, but this little wombat may just save an entire species.

And from her, we can assess what is normal, so we don't have to see any

ever again.

Singing for their supper.

They'll love this.

An inside view of what it takes to feed a zoo.

There's a lot to do on a weekly basis to ensure that all animals are receiving

the right elements and the right food grip for themselves.

So you do have to be quite fit.

And drop yourself in.

Ah, ah, ah. City on.

For a safari like you've never seen before.

This is our largest paddock across the whole zoo.

Just being out here is a pretty good way to start your day.

Taronga Zoo is home to an impressive variety of Australian animals and caters

for all their many and varied needs.

Some like to laze their day the way outdoors.

And then there are those that like to dig a little deeper.

What are you doing?

Hello, how are we going?

Hi.

You're okay.

Hi, little girl.

Here at Stronger Zoo, we have a family group of five southern hairy -nosed

wombats in our wonderful wombat den system.

Hi, little lady.

This is obviously going to replicate the burrows that they would have out in the

wild. Oh, good girl.

Hi, darling.

It's a great system. It allows all album bats to have their own space.

And this purpose -built space is vital if Taronga is to realise its breeding

ambition.

These guys are classified as near -threatened in the wild, so every

program is, of course, really important.

Hi, Nooch. How are we going?

The good news is the program here has been very successful, thanks mainly to

very busy male.

Nice. Oh, yeah.

Oh, that's good.

So Nuge here is so vital to our breeding program. He has fathered lots of

wombats here.

He's probably the only wombat we can do this with.

You done or didn't you?

So no one loves a scratch like Nuge loves a scratch.

And when you consider the size of Nuge's teeth, if he didn't like it, you'd know

about it. They've got a pretty incredible bite on the wombat, but you

probably see that for yourself just looking at those teeth.

Taronga are keen to breed Nuge again, and female wombat Jeddah is the chosen

one. What are you doing, Jeddah?

But right now, Jeddah has her paws full.

Our little Joey here, she is Jedda's second Joey.

Hi, little thing.

She spent the first seven to nine months nice and snug in Mum's pouch, but at

about 12 months of age, this little wombat is growing very, very quickly.

way too big to be in Mum's pouch.

We've previously separated Mum and Joey away from the rest of the group, so

we've given her kind of her own maternity den.

Anyway, that's all changed.

Mum's ready to be back in with the adults, so it's time for Joey to come

learn how to wombat. And so we're going through this introductory process right

now.

Good boy.

Introducing the wombats back into the group can be complicated.

Hi.

She's going to have to learn how to hold her own. She's got that really tough

behind that all wombats have. It's a huge part of their defence.

Not all friendships in wombat hierarchies, you know, they do get

don't get along and she's going to need to figure out where she sits in that

hierarchy herself.

And while baby Minya has some growing pains ahead of her, little does she

she's actually one of the most important wombats in the country.

It's an obvious thing to say, but visitors to Taronga Zoo can learn a lot

the animals just by observing them.

But when it comes to educating the public, one of the most important

the zoo is not who you'd expect.

We have here Ink, who is a black -headed python. He's an Australian snake, and

he's about 18 years old. And he's a really special animal for us. I'm not a

zookeeper. My title is the bourbon gunner.

coordinator, which is a program working with young people.

It's more of a mentoring and therapeutic program.

We learned how to assess your own feelings of fear.

Thankfully, Ink is one cool customer.

I've been working with Ink for six years with the kids, and I think I know his

behavior pretty well.

Black -headed pythons are known to have quite a gentle, docile personality, so

the kids...

really, really look forward to getting the time to work with him.

But it was during a recent session with some visiting children that Susie

noticed a concerning development.

Two or three times a week we take Ink outside.

He has his own sunning pit and he gets natural UV, which he needs, and just an

enrichment activity for him as well. And that's a really good chance for us to

be able to observe his body and his health, his movement.

And recently I noticed that he had a growth on his tongue, which at first I

thought it might have been some pebbles stuck on his tongue.

Definitely some type of growth, which is really unusual.

So I've spoken to the keepers and they're hopefully going to get him into

vets really soon so we can have a look and see what it is.

And her SOS was answered fast.

Today, Keeper Susie is taking Ink for a check -up at the wildlife hospital.

So it's always concerning when you're not sure what it could be. We've never

seen this sort of thing in any of our animals up here at the Institute.

Let's bring ink inside.

Nothing down there.

He's going to have an anaesthetic and we're going to have a look and see

going on with his tongue and see if we can fix it and take that opportunity to

get some follow -up radiographs of his spine because we're monitoring carefully

for any arthritic changes.

All right, he can just go straight back in.

It's okay.

So we want it to fit. Snuggly, but it shouldn't be hard to force in. That

be perfect. Adjust to that notch because that acts like a seal.

56, yeah, and 3 .2.

In the interest of keeping his anaesthetic time fairly short, what I'm

I'm general scanning now and I'm making sure that I've taken x -rays that are

diagnostic and rather than keeping him anaesthetised while I examine each of

these hundreds of little joints, I'm going to come back to that once he's

and I'm going to go through, you know, step by step.

And because he's a big snake, This always takes a little bit of time.

His spine is really important to him. He's a snake, that's how he moves and we

want him to be able to move freely.

One thing that I'm always keeping in mind when he's anaesthetised, we've

basically put him to sleep. His muscles are not working anymore and so his own

muscles are not supporting his spine. We have to do that now during the

procedure and make sure he doesn't suddenly flop or bend because he can't

correct that for himself.

With the x -rays out of the way, Frances is conscious of the anesthesia wearing

off, so she turns her attention to Ink's problematic tongue.

Most growths, they're either going to be due to an infection or could be to,

like, a cancerous growth, a tumour of some sort.

At this stage, Frances isn't sure what it is.

This is an unusual presentation for a snake to have a lesion on the tongue.

One of the most important responsibilities of looking after any

is ensuring they have the correct diet.

And twice a week, that's exactly what Pete and Grace do here at Taronga

Plains Zoo in Dubbo.

Prep the food.

So we've just received a delivery from one of our fresh wholesaler produce

supplies. Right here we have 600 kilos of carrots. Every animal generally eats

carrots from elephants down to your small ring -tailed lemurs.

Here is some silverbeet. This silverbeet is going to be utilised for the

macropods and Aussie walkthroughs.

Macropods consist of our wallabies and our kangaroos. So from that, these guys

require it to be chopped into small elements to allow for behavioural

feeds and to ensure that individuals are getting the right elements to their

diet.

Right here gives you a broad range in the variety of what our primates

eat. This is our cymanx, which is a subspecies of gibbon. So within the

we have got cucumber as well as avocado and carrot. Now this diet isn't yet

complete, however what it does represent is how and a broad range of variety

that the animals get to fulfil their needs.

With tonnes of food arriving every week, ensuring every animal gets what it

needs requires careful planning.

The more planning...

And a lot more planning.

Tuesday's diet's already gone out, so that's great. So what we're up to now is

I'm down here on the board. I've already done the red capsicum, the corn and the

carrots for Wednesday and Thursday.

So I'm just up to the lettuce.

There's a lot to do on a weekly basis to ensure that all animals are receiving

the right elements and the right food groups for themselves.

It's not just fruit and vegetables and meat that we do out here at the zoo.

not just herbivores and carnivores. We also have things called insectivores,

which by the name suggests eat insects, which is what I'm unpacking right now.

These are some of our crickets that have come in to feed some of our bird

species and go to the meerkats as well.

What I'm doing, I'm just eyeballing them, making sure they made the trip

Sydney all good, because obviously they're most nutritional when they're

And so these guys all look fine, they all look healthy, still moving around a

lot.

At the end of a busy food prep day, Pete and Grace like to finish off by hand

-delivering some snacks to one of their favourite species.

So we've just thrown our thiamangs a little bit of capsicum and some banana

also some figs as well. They really loved the figs when we gave them to

And as you can hear, they've enjoyed it and now they're going to territorial

call for us.

Whilst the thiamangs have been given a sneak preview as to what tomorrow's food

delivery day holds... This is just a small part of what they eat. ..the rest

the zoo residents still have one more sleep.

Coming up... Needed a little bit of gravity.

..the subtle art of milking a wombat. I can probably confidently say no -one has

done this before.

And the tussle for top bots.

Chimpanzees aren't gentle little animals.

The little boys get too carried away, the big boys come in and say, hey, cool

your jet.

With southern hairy -nosed wombat Minya now out of Mum Jetta's pouch... Girl

Jetta! Keeper Taryn is introducing her to the rest of the wombat group for the

very first time.

At the moment, she can hear the other wombats on the other side of the gate.

she's actually super keen to get in there and see all of them. So that's why

she's hanging down here.

Naturally,

coming into a big group of wombats, she's the smallest. She is going to be

the bottom of that hierarchy.

Good girl.

So we're just doing this introductory process really, really slowly.

One thing Taryn has on her side is food.

Wombats love their breakfast.

And while they're eating, they're calm.

Wombats, they are herbivores. You know, they are grazers out in the wild.

Now, we try and replicate the diets that they would be eating out in the wild as

closely as we possibly can.

So we have a specially formulated pellet that we feed all our wombats here.

While these pellets are perfect for a wombat on a solid diet, Minya is still

getting milk from Mum.

And that's what makes her such an important member of this near

species.

Close the gate behind us, please.

I'll go through with you some of the doses once she's jabbed. Yeah.

We are lucky enough to have a wonderful nutritionist, Michelle. She has embarked

on a dietary study specifically for wombat.

Okay. Where's Brett?

He's grabbing our weigh board.

Right now at Taronga, we're doing a really important nutritional

of the southern hairy -nosed wombat.

Hello, Iroo. You're waking up. What do you think?

This was inspired by a little southern hairy -nosed wombat that was orphaned.

His name was Waru. We had to put him on an artificial milk replacer.

Hi, little man.

You're really smashing that, buddy.

About ten months of age, he started to have mobility issues.

Come on, bub. Let me get you.

Good boy.

Shuffle. Yeah.

And we found out at that time that he had developed what we call rickets

disease. And rickets is characterized by problems in skeletal growth, and that's

usually due to an imbalance in vitamin D and calcium metabolism.

See how dense the teeth are and some of these skull bones, and the rest of his

bones are quite grey.

So it's possible that there's just not enough calcium in his bones. It

be the case because this diet is specifically formulated for wombats.

With Waru, that problem just was not correcting.

Just worried about him.

Sadly, young Waru could not be saved.

Waru was a very special animal. A lot of people fell in love with that little

southern hairy -nosed wombat.

And zoo staff want to make sure that every future joey in need has the diet

require.

We realized that there's something going on in southern hairy -nosed wombats in

their vitamin D and calcium metabolism that is likely different from all other

species that we've studied rickets or metabolic bone disease before.

But at the time, we didn't have any mother -reared animals to compare to.

Now we have Jetta and we have baby Minya.

We're doing a double wombat procedure.

Jess and Liz will be looking after Jetta, mum.

So what we're going to do with Jeddah is that Brett will put her into a sack and

I will hand inject her.

So as soon as she's asleep enough, I want to get the baby and go.

Let's get a jab.

Black -headed python, Ink, has been brought to the wildlife hospital due to

abnormal growth on his tongue.

So we're just taking some photographs now. It's quite important for our

pathologist as well to be able to see this.

Most growths, they're either going to be due to an infection or could be to like

a cancerous growth, a tumour of some sort. So I guess we want to be able to

some samples to differentiate between those.

What we'll start with is...

taking a few cells from that and give it to Paul in the lab and see what he

sees.

Snakes smell using their tongues, and a forked tongue helps them pinpoint in

which direction their prey is located.

To remove a big chunk of his tongue is a big call.

But since ink is hand -fed by staff, Francis has decided that in this

removing the tongue isn't as significant as it would be in the wild.

Because I don't know what it is, I suppose I want to try and remove as much

it as possible, but at the same time, I want to try and preserve as much of his

tongue as possible.

By taking them off now, it means he's not going to have to have another

procedure, which is always good. It's a big thing for a snake to have an

anaesthetic, and we don't really want to do that if we don't have to.

So I'm just trying to work out how deep these things go.

and whether I need to actually take the whole side of the tongue off. It's been

quite firmly attached to the tongue tissue, and the tongue tissue is very

rubbery.

Okay, I'm going to take the whole thing off.

So can you put that into a Petri dish?

We will wait for the results of the pathology.

from the the lumps that i've taken off and we'll take it from there we'll

whether whether he actually needs anything further or whether today's

fixed proper he's still got one fork of his tongue he's got the whole

rest of his tongue he's just not going to have that other little side

that had those two lumps on it. And the lumps look small when they're off the

snake, but when you're looking at the whole size of his tongue, those must

been irritating for him. So there's the sheath that the tongue goes back into.

As he wakes up, he's going to pull his tongue completely back.

While the surgery is complete, Ink isn't out of the woods just yet.

So the sample could show that he has a tumour or a cancerous -type growth on

tongue. And, you know, if that's the case, has taking it out fixed the

or do we need to worry further for him in the future? And that's what the

pathology is going to help us work out.

It's a new morning and food prep team members Andy and Grace are loading up

today's delivery.

So it's almost 6 .30 in the morning. We've got a lot to do this morning.

got lots of food on the truck. Some of the things we're going to be taking out

this morning. We've got nice apples, carrots, nice fresh food. That

their normal diet.

We've got most of it on the truck and we're almost ready to go.

Western Plains Zoo is over 750 hectares in size.

so making the morning food deliveries can take hours.

Here we are at the black rhino shed. We've just got here before the keeper,

we can get their food out and ready for them for when they turn up.

All right.

Threw some horse pellets in there.

Other bag.

And some wheat jam.

Stocking up for the black rhino keepers. They'll love this.

So this is to make up some of their concentrates.

to get all their vitamins and minerals for them, and if they have to hide any

medication in there, this is the way we do it.

All good.

Just as many hands make light work, out here on the vast Dubbo Plain, so do many

machines. So this is a bit of a different feeding situation. We're

going out on the exhibit with these barberry sheep.

So we've got about 54 animals on this exhibit. As you can see, there's not

on the ground for them to eat.

The logistics of getting these sort of bales around the zoo is pretty...

Pretty difficult at times. You can see they weigh about 350 kilos.

We get in about 250 tonne a year, so we have to then distribute them right

throughout the zoo. So I hope these guys appreciate it.

But it's not all work.

There's some perks as well. He would like some carrots.

Oh, hello. Morning.

This is a really special part of the day. We don't do this every day. It's

if we're lucky enough that they're up here on the beach when we come down.

And obviously she was this morning, so we're very lucky and it makes you very

humbled to do this job.

A definite highlight is when the Sumatran tigers come down for their

Yeah, so it's really cool to come down here and see Sakti.

polish off these chooks. We put a lot of time and effort into procuring them for

these animals to enjoy. So this completes the circle for us to see them

it. It gives us a bit of a joy as well.

With the morning almost done, there's only one more stop left.

And the team have left the largest exhibit for last.

This is a very physically demanding job that we've got here.

Obviously, we're lugging around lots of feed.

The big boughs of hay weigh a lot as well.

So you do have to be quite fit.

So I've just unloaded about 200 kilos of stock feed down here for this mixed

exhibit, which is the African savannah. Yeah, lots of different types of

animals, lots of different types of food, lots of different dietary

requirements. First thing tomorrow morning, this carefully orchestrated

program will get underway.

Ah, ah, ah. Steady on.

Hello, Waru.

After losing bottle -fed wombat Waru to a bone disease... There's just not

enough calcium in his bones.

Taronga have embarked on an ambitious study to try and prevent this from

happening again.

We're doing a double wombat procedure.

So what we're going to do with Jeddah is that Brett will put her into a sack and

I will hand inject her. So as soon as she's asleep enough, I want to get the

baby and go.

Yep. Yep. Do some milking. Do some milking.

Today we've got two teams that are going to be working on this project. We've

got one vet team that is going to take the Joey up to the hospital and do all

the x -rays and also just a general exam. We're going to take pictures of

teeth. We're going to get some swabs for microbial analysis.

I might use a green needle, actually.

We're going to have another vet team that stays down here, and we're going to

looking at mum.

The first step is to anesthetize Jeddah.

All right, how do you want to do it?

Into the sack?

Into the sack. I'll leave her rough, I suppose.

Yeah, yeah.

As best you can.

Jeddah, the mum, will be heavily sedated down where she lives and she'll have

some blood and some milk taken.

It's breeding time, so they don't really want to be confined into one area.

Yes. Our male's a little bit excited.

With mum sedated, slippery Joey Minya knows she's next.

I'm going to give her a jab as well.

Oh, out there to Jess.

I'll meet you at the van.

Being able to study Minya is so valuable.

This is actually the fourth time she's been taken to the wildlife hospital for

blood tests and x -rays.

What we're trying to do is look at her whole skeletal development into an

Jetta's Joey is really important because she is providing what is normal and

from her we can help all the other southern hairy -nosed wombats by giving

an improved milk formula so we don't have to see any rickets ever again.

With Minya en route, Vet Jess and Michelle stay behind for what they know

possibly be their last chance.

to extract crucial information from Jeddah. Now, Jeddah is going to be

providing us with some milk.

However, it's going to be a little bit challenging because she has been trying

to wean her Joey.

And so that means that she might not have a lot of milk. And so what we're

to do is give her a little bit of oxytocin. Now, that's a hormone that's

kind of help let down milk, basically, in mammals.

All right, so this is the oxytocin to help the milk let down.

It works in many different mammal species and we're hoping that it'll work

southern hairy -nosed wombat as well.

Happy with it? Yep, it's stable.

Excellent.

Still to come... He's going to need three weeks' worth of antibiotics.

Has Ink made a meal of his recovery?

He might be a bit annoyed after that.

It's been about eight weeks since he ate last.

Cascading down a gentle slope to the sparkling waters of Sydney Harbour,

Zoo's location is one of the most picturesque in Sydney.

And with a view like this, Taronga felt compelled to build what has become one

of its most popular attractions.

Taronga Zoo being built onto a hill. A lot of our animal precincts end up

starting at the very top of the hill and then wind their way down to the bottom,

which is the central meeting point that everyone ends up at.

at some point in their day.

The Sky Sari is a great option for guests to come back up to the top so

don't have to use their weary legs to walk all the way up that huge hill.

But it's more than just a way back up to the top.

It gives people a layout of what the zoo looks like before they even start their

day. They can see what animals are active.

They can see what paths are best to go through.

They can look out into our beautiful Sydney Harbour as well that the Sky Sari

has a beautiful view about.

They know what they want to see after riding with us, which is always amazing

hear.

And positioned right at the very top of the Sky Safari is one of the zoo's most

popular precincts, Taronga's very noisy yet equally impressive chimpanzee

community, numbering 21 and counting.

The ages range from just over 12 months of age to our oldest, which is probably

one of the oldest.

living verified chimp in the world, a spitter, who's 61, turning 62 years old

this year.

We've got a multi -male, multi -female structure, so we basically want to

replicate what they have in the wild.

So as far as these chimps are concerned, this is their territory.

The community's run by generally the males, but females absolutely have their

role to play.

Chimpanzees... aren't gentle little animals.

They are strong, there's lots of politics, they do fight, they chase each

they scream.

There are all these different behaviours. They're all natural.

We measure our success with the chimpanzee community by going, OK, are

like a wild group of chimps? And we're very happy that this is a hugely

successful community of chimpanzees.

But recently, there's been a big change in the group dynamics here.

Up until about two years ago, we did have an alpha male who was an outright

alpha male. Now, his name was Lubutu.

Sadly, he did pass away.

Since then, we've got a really great coalition of males.

We feel that the reason that they're a great coalition of males is because

Lubutu, who was a well -rounded, well -loved alpha male, he didn't rule with

iron fist.

The younger ones saw the way he led the community.

And so that's their style as well. And so they're actually working as a

coalition currently.

You do have some sub -adult males that are eight and nine years of age. Now,

they'd like to be part of the big boys, but they're physically and mentally and

socially not anywhere near there. So the big boys, if the little boys get too

carried away, the big boys come in and say, hey, cool your jets.

While a coalition running the troop may seem nice in theory, the reality is...

There's always going to be battles between the bigger chimpanzees to claim

top spot.

Now the alpha male, as the word alpha describes,

he's the leader of the group. We've also got alpha within the female communities

as well. But physically the males tend to be bigger and stronger and they're

alpha male.

And they have a lot of responsibility.

So they need to lead the group. They actually need to have a lot of respect

the group. There's a community. So if you think about the chimp community,

got seven different family groups within this group. So the families stick

together, but then the community sticks together as well. So if the families

within the group are having a little disagreement, then they'll support each

other.

There's been no real indicator that someone's trying to become the alpha

That can change.

As ages go on, individual personalities come into play, family group structures

within themselves can come into play and so that can change.

Alpha males can come in, if they come in really hard and fast and want to rule

with an iron fist, they can also be kicked out fairly quickly.

Personality traits aside, there's a lot of similarities between these

chimpanzees and ourselves.

The thing we talk about often is that the chimps are our closest relative as

humans. And so the behaviours that we see from them is very similar to what we

see with our own humans.

To have 21 chimps living together of all different ages and sizes is the number

one thing we can do for them. Sometimes people say, oh, where are the toys?

And we're like, the toys are each other. Their enrichment and their social

structure and the way that all works is their number one thing for their

wellbeing. I hope that this community will be here as it evolves for the next

100 years for the public to come in and learn about protecting the wild and

looking after the wild not just for chimps but for all the animals.

Taronga is currently researching the relationship between milk and bone

development in southern hairy -nosed wombat.

If there's any milk in there, we're going to be able to get it to the

To do that, they need fresh wombat milk.

I can probably confidently say no one has done this before.

We needed a little bit of gravity, and so we kind of moved Jetta a little bit

that that mammary tissue was kind of down lower, and then massaged the

tissue.

And then just basically drew on that teeth.

We've got milk.

We've got milk.

We just, yeah, we got into the rhythm of it.

And we're able to collect enough, I think.

With the milk collected, the other important fluid to test is Jedda's

So what I'm going to do with this one is I'm going to wrap it in tinfoil because

it needs to be protected from the light because I want to test this for vitamin

D analysis.

Meanwhile, up at the wildlife hospital, vet Gabby is anaesthetising Jedda's

daughter, Minya, for her own series of tests.

We'll just get her asleep.

As a breastfed joey, being able to study Minya's development is an incredibly

rare opportunity.

She has a really important role to play because she is providing what is normal,

taking some swabs of her saliva.

Look at those chumpins.

And from her, we can assess what is normal in this species, giving them an

improved milk formula so we don't have to see any rickets ever again.

We're going to be radiographing all parts of her. And what that does over

will give us a really good idea of how their bones develop.

A skull right lateral you want to start with? Yes, please.

And it'll also give us a baseline of a normal wombat that's raised by her mum

compare to southern hairy -nosed wombats that are hand -raised with formula.

All right, so let's do these radiographs.

Yep.

We've seen radiographs of wombat joeys, but we haven't done a series over time.

Jedda's joey here is playing her part.

So although Wauru...

was incredibly sad.

We've learnt a lot and his legacy will be preventing other southern hairy

wombat joeys developing the same disease that he did.

Susie, I'm just coming up to the back door of the institute now.

It's been a week since Francis removed one of the forks from Ink the Python's

tongue.

To remove a big chunk of his tongue is a big call.

So ink's in here.

Yes. How's he been since his surgery?

Yeah, he's been good. His normal self, you wouldn't even know.

Yeah. Have you seen his tongue come out?

Yeah, a couple of times.

Whenever we put in new enrichment or brows, he tends to stick his tongue out.

No blood or anything like that to see. No. It just looks like.

Just the tongue missing an inch. Yeah, one forked tongue.

The news is good, but the results from pathology are better.

So Paul has certainly found cells and bacteria consistent with that being an

access. Yep. He's going to need probably almost three weeks' worth of

antibiotics. We'll see how he goes during that time and how well he's

so on.

But then after that, hopefully that's the end of it for him.

He's going to get an antibiotic injection now.

I'll just go in here.

All right, well, it will be great if he eats. He might be a bit annoyed after

that, but I think if he eats, we know he's forgotten the injection.

Yes.

Ink's recovery has gone so well, it's now time for him to put his new look,

Tongue, to the test.

It's been about eight weeks, just over eight weeks since he ate last, and he's

going to get a really nice big wrap today.

He's flicking out his tongue pretty far. I can see most of his tongue. I can see

where he used to have two forks. He's only got that one fork now.

There we go.

What he's going to do now is he's going to take his time.

Probably will take him a good half an hour to eat that rat.

The first bit definitely takes the longest. He's got to get over the head,

the shoulders so he can start ingesting that entire rat.

What he's doing is he's twisting his head from side to side and he's

walking his mouth, walking his jaw down the length of the rat.

It's about a 300 gram rat.

It's almost 10 % of his body weight.

And that'll last him a good couple of weeks. So it'll take up to about a week

for him to digest that.

That feed was very typical for Ink.

You wouldn't know that he only has one fork on his tongue now.

He just smashed that rat. It went down like a treat. And yeah, one fork

obviously doesn't matter to him.

Home on the rain.

Probably one of the better parts of my job is actually being out here on the

savannah. Feeding time on Taronga's largest exhibit.

Feeding the animals at Weston Plains Zoo is a massive job.

And after yesterday's delivery from Andy and Grace, keepers need to distribute

the food to every animal patiently waiting for their breakfast.

Ah, ah, ah.

Steady on.

We're out on our savannah exhibit, which is our open range large paddock with

multiple species of ungulates.

And we are at the moment feeding our giraffe.

So we'll put this back up in the air. Giraffe can actually reach up and get

The other animals can't eat it, so we know that this food is for giraffe and

giraffe only.

So we'll actually hang the leaves up here as well.

with the hay, and it simulates giraffe eating out of trees.

And these leaves here, they're actually old koala leaves, get recycled.

Koalas only eat the nice tips, and these guys will pretty much strip everything

else.

This particular paddock, the Savannah paddock that we're on now, is our

paddock across the whole zoo.

Roughly 25 to 30 acres in size, holding multiple species.

But one of the issues that we do face in an open range zoo as opposed to your

normal metro zoo would be the fact that you've got a large area to deliver food

over. And in particular in this particular paddock, we have to feed

with our trucks.

You can't walk out here with a wheelbarrow and some of the other

might do.

So we've got the logistics of taking all of our food with us and feeding out

here as well. And we have to take into consideration that we've got multiple

species, so we do have to spread the food out to make sure everybody gets

fair chance of having a go.

Although the animals out on the savannah aren't particularly dangerous, keepers

still need to constantly be on guard.

So standing not more than 10 metres from us are a pair of white rhinos, a pair

of boys.

We usually tend to have males out here or bachelor groups out here. It makes

things a little bit easier.

They're both reasonably young, under eight years of age, but they are quite

inquisitive, do like to come over and check out what's going on with them. But

as they are a dangerous animal, we do need to keep them at a reasonable,

respectable distance just for our own safety.

And despite being here almost every day, the beauty and the privilege of working

on the savannah is not lost on the zoo staff.

Well, today's a real treat. I think this is sort of the second time in my life

since I've been in Dubbo that I've been out here on the savannah. But just part

of the zoo's process of crop skilling people and making sure that our keepers

have experience on a broad range of sections. And so I'm sort of under

tutelage today.

He's been fair on me so far. It's real to be out here in amongst all the

here on the savannah.

Once we feed these guys, we'll then head out and feed the rest of the...

species that are out here as well.

We've just come out of another large drought.

For a little while, since we've had some good rains, we actually had to stop

feeding out here because we had so much grass out here that all these animals,

they just weren't eating this hay that we're giving them.

But now it's starting to dry off a little, brown up.

They're starting to get back into eating the hay.

So we'll do this feed out now this morning.

And we'll come back later on this afternoon to do another one, depending

much they've eaten this morning.

Yeah, probably one of the better parts of my job is actually being out here on

the savannah.

It is pretty quiet, generally, for some of the birds that you hear charging

around and squawking.

But just being out here on a nice day, checking out these guys.

You know, we do have to spend a bit of time observing them, make sure that it's

all good.

It's a pretty good way to start your day.

Back in Sydney, Michelle has just finished with wombat mum Jeddah.

We got a really good milk sample from mum and we got a good blood sample,

is really difficult to get from southern hairy -nosed wombats. It's a good blood

sample as well. They're quite tricky to get blood from. And has arrived at the

wildlife hospital for the final exam on her joey Minya.

Oh, my God, she's big.

Michelle, you're here at the right time because I might get you to take the

photos of the teeth.

Oh, for sure.

We're having a look at her teeth and her dental development because that is all

part of the vitamin D picture.

They're nice and even, aren't they?

She's developing just as she should. The molars have all erupted from the gums

at the same time, and they're all even, which means she's able to eat her food

properly without any problems at all.

It's actually good news all around.

The joey's bones look perfect.

They're beautifully white, which is what bones should be on x -ray, and the

shape of the bones are also excellent.

She couldn't be more perfect.

Whilst it may seem mundane, the fact is that both of these wombats have provided

Michelle with extremely valuable information in her fight to stop bone

in this near -threatened species.

It went very, very well today. All the procedures went very well. It was

flawless. This joey is a perfect specimen. She's sleeping soundly, has no

how much she's helped the health of other animals with this study.

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