Original subtitles

VIRGINIA GAY (NARRATES): You don't get named

one of the best zoos in the world by accident.

And a view as magical as this one is

only gets you so far.

Good boy.

No. This last year, Team Taronga have been busier than ever.

Boom. Whoo!

With their two zoos now bigger than ever.

Come on, handsome man. Let's go.

So, this season, we're taking you closer than ever.

(ELEPHANTS TRUMPET)

And as their colourful residents get ready to make some noise...

(TIGER ROARS) Oh, my goodness.

..let us show you exactly who's who in this zoo.

Just always be watching who's who, who's where.

(OTTER BARKS)

On this episode...

Freya to drone team.

A game of drones.

Can we please get a flyover of 1501?

Taronga takes to the sky...

Lovely. Oh, little jump.

..to save an Aussie icon.

Another one on the way, so, under the pump.

The inside story...

They managed to all slip out under this fence.

..of the great lion escape...

Heart stopping.

..that got Australia talking.

The worst morning I've ever had.

And meet Clarence.

Clarence is gonna be over the moon.

Determined to prove..

Yeah. This is better than I could have imagined.

..he's no toothless tiger.

(TIGER ROARS) What a good boy.

Straight into here, do you think? Yeah. We can.

Every day, Taronga's vets and keepers

work hard to keep hundreds of animals healthy.

He's waking up from this anaesthetic.

But this work doesn't always happen inside the zoo's gates.

400km away in Cooma, southern New South Wales,

the sun hasn't even drawn its first breath.

Oh, it's getting muddy on the back here.

And vet Larry has already set off on a special mission

involving a treasured Australian icon.

Heading out to the field like we are now

is probably one of the most exciting things that we do.

I love getting out into the bush

and doing field work and, you know,

getting your hands on some wild animals.

Um, it's just... it's just great, great feeling.

A search team has already been at work since 3am

using thermal imaging drones to help find

one of the state's recently listed endangered animals.

So, the first koala is, uh, koala 16.K01

and its coordinates are -36.298212.

They're pretty close together.

They're not too far from the road.

Koalas in New South Wales

are sadly moving closer to extinction

due to habitat loss and disease.

So, we'll drive down. Yeah.

And then jump into that first one.

Oh, and only one creek to cross.

(CHUCKLES)

So, Taronga has joined forces with the state government

as part of its strategy to try and save the species.

Alright. Which way are we going?

Our first koala is 170m that way into the bush.

How's everyone going?

(CHUCKLES) Having so much fun.

Gosh. Carrying a koala out of this is gonna be awesome.

Oh, god.

Straight.

We arrive usually on-site around between 6:00 and 6:30

and we set up our vet station.

All good.

The goal of our project is to assess the health and genetics

of six koala populations across New South Wales.

And out of that, hopefully,

we'll mitigate a lot of the threats

such as disease and climate, for example.

This is a fairly critical bit of equipment here.

This is the anaesthetic machine.

Do we want the heat mat out, Lars?

Um, I think we should. Yeah.

What a great spot for-for the day's work, Freya.

Yeah. It's beautiful. Yeah.

The workflow is-is really important

because we've got to be very efficient.

Um, we're, you know, processing quite a number of koalas,

um, every day

and we need to get through them pretty quickly.

This is all the colouring equipment here.

Then Frey's got all the sampling equipment there.

We've got to consider at every point the transmission of disease.

And I suppose the main disease that we are con...concerned

about is chlamydia.

All the equipment needs to be disinfected

thoroughly between koalas.

So, really critical that the actions that we're doing,

the work we're doing doesn't actually spread

the disease among the koalas.

Do you have radio on you?

Yeah. I do, actually.

A lot of deadfall there.

But before Larry can examine a koala...

Uh, trying to find our way through these trees.

..the ground crew will need to find one.

Oh, there are massive trees here.

Look at the base of these things.

Push through that.

Mine says 10m from here.

Mine stopped.

OK. So, it's somewhere here.

Well, let's just...let's triangulate it,

get around and see what we can find.

So, we're at the site

where the drone team found the koala earlier.

We are struggling to locate it

probably because there's such thick understorey.

So, it's very hard to look up, into the canopy to see.

It's also a very, very big tree, um, with lots of branches

that the koala could be hiding in.

Freya to drone team.

We're gonna get the drone team to fly back over

and hopefully, they can assist us with finding the koala.

STEVEN (VIA RADIO): Copy.

Steven, can we please get a flyover of 1501?

Copy. I'll be over soon.

Thank you.

It's gonna be so difficult to find it in this tree.

Taronga is wild with excitement over the birth of a new baby.

Pygmy hippopotamus Kambiri

is a proud new mum to her five-week-old calf.

Goodness me. You've put on some weight, haven't you?

It's an exciting time for the whole zoo

but particularly for her devoted keeper, Tracy.

Well, I've known Kambiri since she was born.

I looked after Kambiri's mother.

She is an amazing individual.

She is the best mother I've ever known in pygmy hippos.

She adores her babies.

She will stand guard over them day and night.

She will leave food if her baby needs her

and she is so protective.

The pygmy hippo is critically endangered

in the wild, so, every new baby is precious.

They're found in Western Africa.

It's estimated only around 3,000 are left in the world.

And they're not to be confused with their bigger cousins,

the common hippopotamus.

They're only about a fifth of the size of the common hippo.

They are solitary.

The female and the male have adjoining territories

and they only come together to breed.

Which means the new baby hasn't ever met her dad,

Taronga's male pygmy hippo, Fergus.

Fergus is a very interesting boy.

Well, we only put them together when Kambiri is in estrus,

which had happened on the fifth July last year.

And immediately,

she led him to the water and they started mating.

Early October, we decided to do an ultrasound on her

and straight away the vets could spot a little backbone.

We were absolutely blown away by this.

We were very happy.

And then the very special day arrived.

It does seem to be in labour.

There we go. There's the sack.

It's very close now.

And she's straining, she's pushing.

And at 03:05, she had delivered a healthy baby calf.

There we go, we have a baby.

We have a calf and it's moving, so that's always good.

The young calf is thriving under mum's dedicated care.

She's stacked on the kilos and loves nothing better

than a swim in the pool.

We decided to name her La Lolly,

which means there is always love.

And when it comes to a pygmy hippo baby,

there always is.

There's a change in the air for Taronga's male Sumatran tigers.

And the wind behind that change is Tamara,

senior carnivore keeper and serious tiger lover.

Who doesn't love tigers?

I certainly love them and, you know, we all really should.

And we hope that when people come and see our tigers here at Taronga,

they maybe get a bit more inspired about the tigers in the wild

that need a lot more help.

There are only around 350 of these tigers left in the wild...

which makes Taronga's tiger group incredibly important

to their genetic pool worldwide.

Currently at Taronga,

we actually have three different groups of tigers.

We have the family group,

which is mum and three of her offspring.

We do have two individual males. One is Clarence and one is Kembali.

Sumatran tigers are one of the smaller tiger species

but their giant roar can be heard as far as 3km away,

especially at mealtime.

(TIGER ROARS)

Hey. Hey. Hey.

Clarence, just relax.

In the wild, tigers are solitary animals.

So, in zoo care, we need to separate them for feeding

because we don't want aggression.

We wanna make sure each member of the family

is getting the right amount of food for their body weight and size.

So, you know, a 110kg male tiger is gonna eat more meat

than a 80 kilo female.

So, what we actually do is feed them twice a day

in small portions every day.

We do vary the types of meat that they get each day

but our males don't feed together

because it's just too hard for us to avoid fighting.

(TIGER ROARS)

Hey, hey, hey. You're OK.

Our males have some anticipation food behaviours

around our hoppers in the dens

because they'll get in small feeds each day.

They'd start sort of pacing and get all excited

and some of the behaviours weren't necessarily behaviours

we wanted to see.

So, Tamara has joined forces

with Taronga's wildlife feeding team.

Who's gonna come from that side, hey?

Yep. He'll come out here.

And together, they're getting into their heads

and the stomachs

of one of the world's most endangered animals.

(TIGER ROARS)

Oh, my goodness.

Even though these animals are born in zoo care

and they're gonna live their lives in zoo care,

we still want to represent

that they are wild tigers

and they are representing their wild tiger cousins

that are actually out in the wild.

So, what can we do to bring out that tiger behaviour?

Coming up, Marnie the pelican really puts his foot in it.

Hop up. Good job, buddy.

And... Wait up. Wait up.

..it's crunch time for this endangered species.

One of the areas that chlamydia does affect is the eyes.

Hi, Mila, you looking this way?

Over time, every animal at the zoo, large and small,

builds a relationship with their keepers.

Good girl.

Whether it's feeding time or fun time,

the zookeepers and all the animals

learn to cooperate with each other...

even the ones you mightn't expect.

So, we have four Australian short finned eels

that live with us here at the wildlife retreat.

Short finned eels are local to the waters

of Australia and New Zealand

and around Papua New Guinea as well.

They're currently listed as threatened.

Training the eels has been really challenging

but what I have gathered is that they do have

a really good sense of hearing.

They can also detect vibrations as well.

We actually use a rock to make a noise

and we initially trained the recall by pairing the sound of the rock

with positive reinforcement in their environment.

So, we would provide the recall and then pair that

with their food for the day

and then over time, they learn that the sound of that recall

means that something positive is coming.

There's one individual that I feel as though

I've developed quite a strong bond with.

It's really beautiful.

And from our training sessions,

I've learned that he really does enjoy

some tactile enrichment as well,

so, he will come and offer a physical exam.

Good boy.

Presenting for a physical examination

is just one of the important skills

almost all the animals need to learn.

Hello.

And that's especially true

for Australian pelicans, Eora and Mani.

Hello. Yes, hello.

Every day... Hi, Eora.

..Keepers like Ben and Tanisha will give this feathered pair

a thorough health check.

Um, I'll do Eora first. So, could you pass me Eora's pouch?

Yep. No worries.

Uh, so, today, we're gonna be doing

our regular foot check on our pelicans.

This is something known as a podoscope.

Uh, it's designed for us to be able to really easily check

the underside of their feet.

So, the glass roof allows them to stand on it

and then to reflect their feet image into that mirror.

Previously to having the podoscope,

what we would have to do to be able to check their feet

is a little bit more invasive.

So, to move away from something like that

is to train them to be able to do their own health checks.

Hop up.

Good job, buddy.

Nice and still.

Being seabirds, they're quite susceptible

to something known as, uh, bumblefoot.

Kinda splits open the bottom of their feet,

easy for bacteria or viruses to get in.

Oh, you don't want that one?

Are you done?

Um, at the moment, they're looking pretty good.

Can you hop off the podoscope for me, handsome?

Come on. Let's go.

As dawn approaches in Southern New South Wales,

the Taronga koala team

have just launched a massive operation

to perform health checks on wild koalas.

Step one is finding them.

Copy ground team, um,

we can't detect the koala in that tree.

Bec will start having a look in the vicinity of that area.

The rising ground temperature

has made it difficult for the drone crew

to find the koala's heat signature.

They can move a fairly

substantial distance in a short time.

Um, it's been at least an hour

since we initially detected this koala,

so, it could maybe have gone several 100m.

STEVEN (ON RADIO): Copy ground team?

Go ahead.

STEVEN (VIA RADIO): Yeah.

It's definitely moved off and I can't...see it.

I'm gonna keep having a look for a little while

but, uh, not very apparent.

Over.

Copy that. We'll leave one or two people here.

They can't see it from above or below.

It's just so much understorey.

It's like so high, though.

Flooding it out for him. So...

Jacob, are you happy to hang here, mate?

Yeah, mate.

Carly? Yeah?

You can hang tight too and just do, like, sort of circles around it.

Yep. Sounds good.

Alright. Brilliant.

So, the call is made to leave two people to keep looking...

Alright, good luck.

..while the rest of the team move to another location

where, hopefully, they'll have more luck.

A bit easier to see now even.

Exactly. Yeah. The light's already getting better.

Mm-hm. I'm gonna go this way.

Like, slightly to the left but...

thank you.

And with a little more light comes a little more of that luck.

OK. Cool.

But now, for the tricky part.

What are you thinking?

Just when it's down at that main fork, more or less?

Yeah. That's what I was thinking.

What we're doing right now is bringing the koala down.

So, basically, we've got this big long extendable pole,

wavy, colourful, loud bits of fabric on the end.

And what we do is we extend it up above the koala's head

and gently shake it

and that will encourage the koala to come down the tree.

Nice. Coming down. Nice and slow.

Nice. Keep it nice and casual. That's really good.

They're just trying to stop her from jumping across to other trees

where it could be more tricky.

Good. Good, that's good there.

OK. Let's keep it there.

Lovely.

Oh, little jump.

Just hold it there. Just hold it there, Seth.

Yeah, just hold. Just hold.

We'll just do a quick reset. Yep.

Might just get her noose over there.

So, Freya, you're gonna follow me.

Got the noose?

(KOALA SCREAMS)

Yeah. You're good. Lovely work.

Ready, Freya?

Let's just wait for them.

Oh.

Hey.

Didn't get a good look but we think this is a female.

She looks fully grown, so probably somewhere around the 7-kilo mark.

We have a decent walk back with her. Yeah.

I think it was about 200m

that we've got to go through the bush.

She's getting heavier.

By the end, she'll be 12 kilos.

(PANTS) Oh, OK.

Right.

This furry patient is weighed...

8.14. 8.14.

..and sedated before Larry gives her a thorough examination.

Alright. Get some swabs now.

Chlamydia, of course, is a significant disease of koalas

and one of the effects of chlamydia is infertility.

Larry will send samples to the lab

but there are some tests he can do right away

to look for signs of infection.

One of the areas that chlamydia does affect is the eyes.

Get... they get terrible conjunctivitis and keratitis.

I hate the eye ones.

So, her eyes look beautiful.

So far, so good.

Let's have a good look in her pouch.

But it's this marsupial's pouch that will give Larry

a much better idea just how healthy this koala really is.

There's a little tick there.

Mani the pelican has passed his health check

with flying colours.

Can you hop off the podoscope for me, handsome?

Come on. Let's go.

Which means there's absolutely nothing stopping him

from putting his best flipper forward.

Good boy. Come on.

We've noticed that his feet are really nice and healthy,

which means he's able to come on a good walk.

These walks, uh, are really good for their feet

getting a good workout of their limbs

but it's also really good for them having that enrichment.

It's because of this recall training that Mani can enjoy

a regular walk outside his habitat.

Let's go.

He trusts his keepers and his keepers trust him.

Good. Come on.

Even when he receives an unexpected call.

Oh, what's down there?

Those are the seals, mate.

You know sea seals?

It's happening. Oh, yes.

While Mani trundles along above, down the hill...

Good boy.

..a very vocal neighbour is also taking a stroll.

Pepper, go.

Hey, buddy.

So, this is Pepper.

He is a 16-year-old California sea lion.

So, he was born at a zoo over in Europe

and relocated to Australia,

uh, when he was just under the age of two.

So, he's been with us for quite some time now.

Today, we're just practising, uh, couple of recalls

between myself and Dana.

Go.

Good job.

So, you'll see the keepers, we wear a metal, uh, stainless ring

and we've got a stainless pouch.

So, um, just tapping the pouch makes a really, obvious sound.

Go.

We do these training sessions on and off

to keep the behaviour really strong.

That sound means I'm gonna get something great, um,

so, I'm gonna pay attention really, really quickly

or come to that-that, keeper who-who's giving me that signal.

Go. Our boys get really big.

Pepper's 212 kilos at the moment.

We need to know that we can safely work around them

and in-in the event of something going wrong...

Go.

..we need to know that we can call them back

to the-the keeper who's working with that animal.

We've never, in my time here,

had to use it in the event of emergency

but that's why we have her trained.

Because, you know, another animal crosses paths

or they're running through an area we need to call them back from,

we know that we've just got that instant response

if we need to get their attention really, really quickly.

Whether it's sea lions...

Alright, Pep. Water.

..or real lions, the principle is the same,

even if the stakes are higher.

So, today, we're going to do our lion recall training.

Gonna ring the bell...

(RINGS BELL)

and then we send the food through as quickly as we can

so that the sound of the bell predicts the appearance of food.

Really important that as that association

is done correctly.

We ca... we don't wanna put the food through then the bell.

We certainly don't wanna do the bell and the food at the same time.

It has to be sound of bell followed by food

to create the-the right association.

We want this sound to be so conditioned with them

that they hear it and their brains are triggered

to think food's coming.

It's these training sessions that give Louise

and the carnivore keepers

the confidence to know they can recall the lions

in any situation, even the most unimaginable.

We've had an incident with the lions, an animal emergency.

The lion family had escaped.

On Ngarigo land in country New South Wales,

Larry is examining his first koala for the day.

Let's have a good look in her pouch.

Sadly, nothing in the pouch.

Usually, if they've had joeys and they've suckled,

their teat gets quite long

and it's quite obvious that they, um, they've had joeys

but her teats are quite small.

So, at her age,

you would expect that she would have had

several joeys by now.

We've seen a few koalas in this population

that seem to be potentially sterile.

It's a worrying sign for the koala and the entire species.

Infertility through disease is a major contributor

to their plummeting numbers.

Alright. We're gonna ultrasound her now.

Yep.

This is a fancy little ultrasound machine,

perfect for field work

and connects wirelessly on the tablet here,

then it's just uploaded to-to the cloud

at the end of the day.

I'm scanning the kidneys and the reproductive tract.

Obviously, the reproductive tract is critically important

because that's an organ system that is affected by chlamydia.

Capture image.

So, this is a really cool thing here.

I just say "Capture Image" and it takes an image.

So, she's got, uh, cysts associated

most likely with her ovaries, large cysts.

And all these here are-are cysts.

And there's a really large one just there

and that's very typically seen with chlamydia

and, uh, can and causes infertility

and I'd say that's definitely what's happening with her.

Yeah.

Yeah. So, she's got quite a few.

Not great for this little girl.

No.

Chlamydia is a bacterial infection that can spread quickly

through a koala population.

Severe infections can also result in blindness

and respiratory disease.

Done? Yep.

OK. I'll need to get a picture of that.

We put a tracking collar on her

so that when we come back to this site next year,

we can recapture her and see how she's going.

I've gotta measure her neck and make sure it's the right size.

We don't want her to be too loose. We don't want her to be too tight.

So, I've gotta be very, very careful in getting an accurate measurement.

That's 27.4.

We can only put it on full grown koalas.

If the koala's growing, of course, uh, the collar will just get tight.

There's also a little bit of a safety mechanism.

If the koala gets caught, for example, in a branch,

that the collar will break.

Alright. Well, we are done.

Although there's no cure yet,

chlamydia vaccines are being developed

and have been trialled in other koala populations.

I'll just give her a little injection here.

So, this actually reverses a component of the anaesthetic

that we gave

but you can see she's waking up already anyway, which is good.

So, she'll now sit in that bag probably for about an hour...

for her to recover fully.

Another one on the way. Should be here in a few minutes.

So, uh, so, under the pump.

Coming up...

For the first time...

My heart absolutely sank.

..the real story of the great escape.

So, we had two lions immediately secured

while five others were still out.

Taronga's Sumatran tigers are a pretty intense bunch.

Oh, he's climbing up the tree.

They don't know it yet

but they're about to get a taste of something very, very different.

Oh, very nice, Carlin.

Yes. Yep.

You had a look at these when they came in as well, right?

Yeah. Inspected them.

And it all starts with wildlife feeding supremo,

Michelle, Australia's first ever zoo nutritionist.

Generally, the carnivores up to this point

have been fed chunks of carcasses.

So, chopped up pieces. You know?

That this might be part of a leg or part of a rib cage,

things like that

and that's not very natural for an animal.

They're used to eating a large portion of meat

and then resting for a number of days.

And so, we were trying to incorporate

that type of feeding behaviour

into the feeding regime for the animals.

This looks really good and it'll be interesting to see

how this goat is received.

I'm trying to mimic what a tiger may eat in the wild, so...

Helping Michelle to change things up is Taronga butcher, Carlin.

The kidneys are looking nice and healthy.

It's a good colour.

And also, down here, we have the lungs and the heart.

When we're talking about a-a tiger,

in the wild, they'd be eating whole carcasses.

They'd be eating the skin, the hair, the-the organs

and that all provides different nutrients for that animal.

So, what we have here let's see.

We got the heart here, Michelle. What's that offering?

We're gonna get some copper and zinc

and-and iron and things from the heart.

And... Yeah.

Also, what do we have down here?

We've got a nice, healthy looking liver.

OK.

Well, the liver's gonna offer Vitamin A

and that'll help to balance out the rest of the carcass.

Yeah. OK.

Because a lot of the minerals,

uh, are really concentrated in those organs.

Really. Yeah.

So, when they're removed,

we have to add extra supplementation.

OK.

We're trying to provide more natural opportunities

for the carnivores.

It may take a while for them to consume

and then have a-a few fast days afterwards,

a couple of days when they're not fed

portions of meat.

Exciting. Very exciting.

Hello, buddy boy. How are you doing? This way.

Big cat, Clarence,

is the first tiger to sink his teeth into the new grub.

What I'm hoping to be able to see today

is just some amazing natural tiger instincts come out.

Here he comes now.

This is exciting.

He's actually doing some plucking. This is...this is awesome to see.

He's plucking some of the fur.

Fur plucking is natural behaviour for wild tigers.

It helps clean their teeth and gums.

He's actually using a bit of his body to kinda get in there.

You can see the muscles working in his jaw.

He's loving it so far.

This is great. This is good to see.

And now, he is picking it up and he's taking it away.

And he's actually taking it and hiding it

at the back of the exhibit.

That is awesome because he just displayed,

for the first time ever, caching behaviour.

He's hiding his food and he's going to eat in safety,

which is incredible.

This has been an awesome trial and it's really a different

and new way of feeding for us and for Clarence.

And now, that we've seen the first smaller carcass,

I reckon we challenge him next time.

(BELL RINGS)

An animal's quick response to cues is vitally important at Taronga.

And across the zoo, carnivore supervisor Louise

has been training the lion pride to return to their den

just at the ring of a bell.

Alright. I'm gonna feed a boy.

And for very good reason.

Good boy.

Around 18 months ago, we had an incident with the lions.

They had actually escaped their habitat.

There was a construction issue with the fence.

Our adult male and his young cubs

managed to all slip out under this fence.

The only ones that stayed behind was mum and one of our young girls

called Ayanna.

So, for me, that morning

was probably one of the worst mornings

I've ever had working here at Taronga Zoo.

My heart absolutely sank.

Thankfully, the keepers managed to recall them

back to our holding area.

So, we had two lions immediately secured...

while five others were still out.

As soon as the youngsters knew that their mother wasn't with them,

all they wanted to do was come home.

Our keepers have got such a wonderful relationship

with the lion family

that basically, they use their voices

to direct the lions home.

And, also, we had mother lion as well

using her voice to call them.

And sure enough,

the first one went under and came back home

and then the others watched them

and then they all came back up to our holding building

where our keepers were able to secure them all to safety.

There was one lion that didn't go back under the fence.

She was showing some stress behaviour.

She wasn't sure how to get back in.

And because she was starting to get quite worried,

we made the decision to dart her

just to make sure that she came home safely.

So, pretty incredible day.

Heart stopping...

but such a great resolution and such a great demonstration

of how effective recalling your animals can be

and also building that relationship with them as well.

Coming up, a real shock...

Look at that.

..for Larry.

Massive, massive one there. Yeah, right.

And Clarence takes it up a notch.

We may need to get bigger carcasses.

Back at the field hospital near Cooma,

400km south of Sydney,

Larry is examining his second koala of the day.

Her eyes were good.

Pouch is empty.

A little bit of wetness around the bottom there.

OK. Should we do some ultra-sounding?

So, what we call wet bottom

is a...is a-a typical sign of chlamydia.

A second female with chlamydia, which can cause infertility,

is a very worrying sign for this koala population.

Capture image.

But it does give Larry and the research team

a better understanding of the threats they face.

Capture image.

Couple of months ago,

our first field trip was in the Blue Mountains area.

They were extremely healthy animals.

There are lots of other threats, of course,

but disease is a major threat.

So, this trip is certainly quite different to our last one.

Massive cyst.

It's 5cm long there.

Wow.

Down at the collection site,

the first koala Larry examined

is about to be released back into the wild by Freya.

This lady is ready to go back to her tree.

They're all different. Every koala will behave differently.

Some of them will go straight up that tree.

We will see.

Not quite straight up, but she's on her way nonetheless.

I think this is my favourite part of the trip

is, like, getting to release them

and just seeing them spring up that tree, um,

and just, like, knowing that they're gonna live their life,

the same way as it was before we came along,

um, but now, we just have more information on them.

Nice one, Freya.

Meanwhile, over at the field hospital,

Larry's third patient has arrived

and the news isn't any better for this little one.

Look at that. Massive cyst.

I think she's got them on both sides, actually.

Mm-hm. Yeah.

Like there's this one which is on the left side...

and then you go across the other side.

Massive one there. Yeah, right.

That is huge. That is huge.

OK.

So, next sample we're gonna take is a little biopsy

from the margin of the ear here

and this is a very important sample for the genetics work.

With this project,

they'll be able to find genes that are in relation to disease.

So, that's never been done before,

so, this, uh, project is-is incredibly valuable in that regard.

I know it seems a bit sort of crude using a leather punch

but it's actually very effective

in getting these little samples.

Oh, just a little snip of tissue there.

It's these samples which will help find

new ways to fight or even prevent disease.

OK.

Done?

Done.

And it's these koalas

that are helping ensure the survival of their species.

Alright. There you go. Cool.

You good? Yes.

So, we finished processing the koalas for today.

All of them had evidence of reproductive tract disease,

unfortunately.

So, we've-we've taken all the samples we need.

We've put tracking devices on all of them

because it'll be really valuable to monitor

how these animals are going,

the ones that are affected by chlamydia.

That was a great release.

So, seems to be completely recovered from her anaesthetic.

Hopefully next year when we come back here,

we'll actually be able to find those individuals again

and see how they have been, how they're going.

Although the koalas can now relax, no such luck for Larry.

His day is far from over.

Getting as far away as possible from us.

Back at Taronga, some big cats are experiencing a whole new,

more realistic approach to meal times.

We still want to present food in the most natural way

and carcass feeding has definitely been

one of the best ways to do that.

And today,

Tamara is raising the stakes for Clarence, the Sumatran tiger.

What we're actually gonna do is bury the carcass under...

Yeah.

..all this bamboo

so, he has to kind of search for it, hunt a little bit.

Yeah. One, two, three.

Alright. OK. Sorry, mister goat.

It's actually a wild goat,

so, bonus points for conservation as well.

The harder we can make it, the better.

Clarence is gonna be over the moon. I can't wait to see him come out.

After weeks of experimenting with varying levels of difficulty,

Tamara and Michelle settle in to watch a game of cat and carcass.

It's been six days since his last carcass.

He should be hungry.

Come on.

Come on, buddy.

You got this.

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Oh, good.

He's looking. Oh, oh.

Yeah. Come on, buddy. Here he goes.

Come on.

Oh. Oh.

He's got a hold of something, doesn't he?

For Clarence, who can almost taste it,

it's a bit like finding a carcass in a haystack.

Oh. (CHUCKLES) Is anyone watching?

Making sure there's nobody behind him.

You can see him working really working on that carcass,

all different angles and he's, like, holding it down.

So good.

Using those claws, it's incredible.

You don't see that every day.

Yeah.

This is better than I could have imagined

to see all these behaviours that he exhibits with this carcass

over some of the other things that he's been given in the past.

So exciting. So, so exciting.

Clarence is clearly happy with his new diet

but he's not the only one.

The trial has been so good.

We're still sort of working through the scheduling

and closely monitoring the tiger's weight.

What a good boy.

Well done, Clarence.

Good boy.

133. OK.

He's looking really good, his body condition.

Amazing. Aren't you?

You're a very happy boy, aren't you?

We may need to get bigger carcasses or, you know,

change the days in between each feed.

And if they needed any further confirmation

that they're onto a winner,

as the old saying goes, what goes in must come out.

G'day, g'day, g'day.

I have a present for you.

Oh. A bucket of tiger poo.

Oh, that looks pretty good.

Yep. Poop.

And for Michelle and Tamara, it's the last piece of the puzzle.

Oh, let's see what we've got, Tamara.

Yes. The fun stuff begins. This is it.

This is four days post. Yeah? Four days post. Yeah.

So, we're still seeing some fur in there?

Yeah. Which is good.

And bone?

Yep.

And what have we got here?

What little treats do we have in there?

Did someone say treats?

Oh, look at that claw.

(GASPS) Wow.

So, this is a kangaroo claw.

That is... Oh, my goodness.

Yeah. That is pretty amazing.

So, we've got skin there and claw.

Wow. That's awesome.

That's pretty cool.

There's all kinds of fun things you can find in poop. Right?

(CHUCKLES) Yeah.

So, overall, I think it is, like, quite amazing that even though

food has never been presented this way before,

once it was, the natural tiger instinct just came out.

We are definitely gonna keep doing the carcass feeds into the future.

Coming up, the results are in...

We processed 52 koalas.

..for Project Koala.

We're expecting possibly some level of disease.

In Cooma,

senior vet Larry may have finished his koala examinations

at the field hospital

but the job doesn't end there.

We had a very successful morning. We deployed three trackers.

So, now, we've got a whole lot of work to do.

Entering the details of the koalas,

linking it with the trackers that we deployed.

There's a lot to do on this project.

And the awesome technology used by the team

has revolutionised their work in the field.

These trackers are set to upload,

uh, to a base station every six hours.

So, we'll get a signal every six hours

as to where that koala is.

And it's really cool, actually seeing them on the map

as how they move around and-and what have you.

These here are individual koalas.

So, these are all the trackers that we've already deployed.

It's a great system and we get incredible data.

There's so much that we're going to learn

from this project in terms of the demographics

and, you know, home ranges of the animals

and the health and the genetics of-of koala populations

in- in New South Wales.

A few weeks later,

Larry is back in his real office having now analysed the results

from his time in the field.

And they're surprising to say the least.

We processed 52 koalas. Good numbers.

We did learn a lot about this population

just from our examination that we did in the field

and particularly the ultrasound examination.

We were expecting possibly some level of disease.

Almost, uh, probably a quarter of the females

actually had chlamydia,

so, it's a bit sad to see that.

But on the flip side of that, actually, there were quite a few

that were breeding.

So, we had six koalas with joeys in their pouch.

I even saw two pregnancies on the ultrasound.

So, you know, there are some... there's some evidence of-of disease,

but on the other hand,

there actually is quite a few of animals are quite healthy.

Over the next two years,

Larry and the team will continue to check up

on six different koala populations around New South Wales.

There is hope.

I mean, both the populations so far that we've examined

have good-good numbers of koalas.

I'm surprised, actually, the numbers there.

But the great thing is that we're actually doing something.

We're learning more about koalas and there's a concerted effort

being put into koalas in New South Wales

with the whole goal,

the goal ultimately to try and double the population by 2050

rather than have them extinct at 2050.

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