Original subtitles

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. Woo.

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.

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

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

You should always be watching who's who, who's where.

On this episode...

Bars are essentially the foundation of our relationships with elephants.

There's a science.

We're checking the foot pad, we're checking the nails.

To bath time.

We check the mouth, we ask for their trunk up. Well, an elephant bath time

anyway. The bath itself is not sort of, you know, a bubble bath and a rubber

ducky.

I love him.

The clock's ticking.

The nurses have got a hospital worth of gear packed into the van.

As Taronga gets mobile.

Back to Tammy Haddon.

Injection at 8 .43.

For baby Mwamba.

Be prepared.

And silent but deadly.

Male ringtail lemurs will engage in stink fights.

Just what causes a lemur. We can't smell it. To deploy their secret weapon. It's

definitely very pungent.

Gorillas are one of our closest relatives in the animal world.

She doesn't like the rain at all.

And for primate keeper Beck, her bond with Taronga's gorilla community runs

pretty deep.

One of the highlights of my career still to this day was that I watched the

birth of Mwamba.

Mwamba is the baby of our group.

We have seven Western lowland gorillas here at the zoo. Our troop is led by

Kabali, our silverback male. We have three adult females and then we also

Mwamba's two elder brothers who are nine years old and eight years old.

Taronga's thriving gorilla group are part of an international conservation

program to protect this species against extinction.

Western lowland gorillas are found in the Congo area in Africa.

They are classified as critically endangered due to a few reasons, but

loss is a big one. They are taken for bushmeat trade as well as poaching,

especially the young ones.

It's one of Taronga's young ones that Bec has her eye on today.

So this morning I'm just doing a bit of a throw -over feed of some chicory.

Chicory is really high value, so it's a favourite of theirs.

Little Mwamba, he's just walking up the back there.

Because Mwamba is the baby of the group, he still gets away with a lot. You

know, he's six years old. He might go up and steal some food from mum or dad or

one of the others and they kind of let it slide. He gets away with a lot.

Bec and the other primate keepers have noticed Mwamba has been behaving a

bit differently after a recent illness.

So for me, what I can see is, yes, he's running around, but he is very tentative

on that left leg. So instead of jumping straight down with both feet, he's kind

of holding his weight on his arms and scooting himself down.

He's just a little bit more tentative when he steps over that rock there as

well.

So it's Mawamba Gorilla.

You will hand inject him in the gorilla house and then we'll do our usual safety

procedures.

Vet Frances knows there's only one way to truly understand what's wrong with

Mwamba, and that's a trip to the hospital.

So in terms of his actual procedure, because there's quite a lot of...

X -rays, you know, we're investigating his lameness, you know, a couple of

swollen joints that he's had over the last few months.

We do have specialists coming in to assist with this. Emma's going to help

the anaesthetic. Yes. And Andrew is going to do all the ultrasounds and X

and so on for Mawamba.

Bec has also noticed an unusual lump in Mawamba's belly.

The other thing I wanted to chat about, we check that hernia that he has. You

can see sometimes it pops out.

Absolutely, and ultrasound in that will tell us exactly what it is and whether

we need to do anything or not.

There are always considerable risks involved with separating a gorilla

They are fiercely protective of their own and incredibly strong, even six

-old Muamba.

The goal is to have gorillas well away from that area, but obviously it's an

unpredictable environment, so we'll do our best.

Be prepared that there could be strong reactions on the day. Yeah.

Buddy? Mealtime. It always gives the keepers an opportunity for a much closer

look at the animals. Hey, Rosie!

But it works both ways.

Good. It also allows all the animals to get a much closer look at their keepers.

Perip is a young western foal, also known as a chudich.

He is a carnivorous marsupial. They are related to Tasmanian devils, so very

sharp teeth, a lot of personality and very, very curious.

When he first arrived, we would see little glimpses of him as he was very

people and a little bit more nervous and cautious about what was going on around

him.

The species are considered near threshing, if matters around 10 ,000

at the moment.

Taronga is determined to increase those numbers and has thus far bred and

reintroduced 30 chudich into the West Australian outback.

What do you reckon about this spot?

I reckon he's got a good line to that nice hollow there. There are more

also planned in New South Wales where these cute marsupials are currently

extinct.

OK, excellent.

And yes...

I did just say cute, but it does pay to stay on your toes around these

inquisitive little carnivores.

So there are some risks to working with that species.

Cheris is fantastic, but like I said, he is a carnivore, so there's sort of a...

We do have that little bit of caution we still need to have as well. At this

stage, he's only showing curiosity, but we also do have that challenge of not

knowing where he might be in this exhibit.

So he has shown a lot of interest in the keeper entry door.

We do find him waiting at that door because quite often that door does

oh, there's food coming into my exhibit right now.

That's where I want to be.

Problem is, it's not where Laura and the other keepers want him to be.

So this is an undesirable behaviour.

We want him active in the exhibit. We want him moving around and not pre

-empting where things are going to happen in that exhibit.

We want his day to be unpredictable because when we have predictability,

can get pretty boring pretty quickly.

So the big question is, how do you feed a carnivorous Chittich

without opening the door at the same time?

What we've trialled is a feeder that's within his exhibit.

but it's actually triggered from outside the glass. So we don't necessarily need

a keeper to go into the enclosure for him to have a reward.

It's remote controlled. We use a laser pointer that we can load those up in the

morning, so it's nice and safe.

And then at any point of the day, we can go out front of the exhibit and trigger

them with that laser pointer.

The idea is just to get him to a point where that exciting stuff is happening

without any interaction with the door. All right, he's coming down.

He's just curious.

You all right? Yeah, he's good.

From the safety of her position outside, Keeper Laura also uses a shaker to

signal to Perep that food is on the way.

He got it.

He worked so hard.

As soon as you did that shaker.

Straight away, turned around, came straight towards us.

It's great that we can do it remotely.

So we should be able to set up a few of these.

We can even do it for insects as well. So you can release it all over the

exhibit.

Give them something to do during the day and keep them really busy.

We can look at changing up the schedule, make it less predictable for them.

Keeper safety aside, it's keeping things less predictable that keeps a chedditch

stimulated. He's really getting into the mice today.

He certainly never has a poor appetite. He's always ready for his snack.

Whether that snack is just a couple of mice or something a little bigger.

Hey, girl.

At mealtime, an animal's natural curiosity.

is usually partnered with a healthy dose of caution.

She's not sure if she needs to eat this or if this is going to eat hers.

TB2, TB1. So grey, green, yellow.

Over at the wildlife hospital, the veterinary team are preparing for a big

with a relatively small but very strong gorilla.

Got no oxygen cylinders out yet.

We've got our youngest male gorilla, Mawambo, who's going to have an

and a full exam today.

He's had some issues, being a bit lame and sort of having the odd swelling in

his joints, and so we want to investigate that.

The nurses have got a hospital worth of gear packed into the van.

This time of the morning it's like putting together a Rubik's Cube.

A lot of work getting everything prepared.

And we are done.

Keeper Bec has been rehearsing Mwamba's hand injection for months.

From practising the moves to using a blunted syringe

against Mwamba's arm.

Touch.

Touch.

Bec has also brought along a secret treat, a favourite of Mwamba's, to help

the deal.

Gorillas don't really pet honey like this.

They're not allowed a lot of food before the procedure.

So we've put some PPE on, and that's more just to protect the gorillas.

so closely related to us.

So any sickness that we can get, they can also get. So it's really important

that when we're in really close proximity to gorillas, we're wearing

gloves.

So I think I'm ready.

So Mawamba is going to be hand -injected by Bec.

Good boy.

Do you want to do waiting here until it's done?

Absolutely. We're using Zolotil and Medetomidine.

Touch.

Good.

843. Back to Tammy Hadlam.

Injection at 843.

Amazing.

Good work. Thanks.

Just six minutes later, Mwamba is sleeping peacefully.

And just as importantly, the rest of the gorilla group are also calm.

He will have all the usual restraints and so on.

I need extra hands.

I'll go back and do that.

Righty -o. Oxygen on.

I can feel him breathing. It's really hard to see when the van joggles.

The distance jaw turned tick -tock a bit when we moved him.

His rate went up a little bit too, his respiratory rate. Still only lightly

anaesthetised, the movement of the van is causing some movement in this 55kg

gorilla. It's been about half an hour since that injection.

Frances's experience is telling her she needs backup.

Do you want to go and grab some proper salt? Just in case we need it in there.

Coming up, a super -sized bird... Although she's really large.

..gets a super -sized meal. She's one of our more cautious animals.

And we've all been warned never to smile at a crocodile.

If they're smiling, it indicates stress and a threat.

But a chimp?

The smile is quite a threatening display.

As day breaks over Dubbo, Taronga Western Plain Zoo is already long awake

and in the thick of the action.

Good. In the elephant barn, even though it's morning, a very important daily

ritual is in progress.

Bath time.

Well, the bath is not necessarily about getting an elephant all clean and shiny.

And these baths are essentially the foundation of our relationship with

elephants, you know, whose lifespan spans 50, 60 years.

Asian elephants are endangered in the wild.

There are seven at Taronga Western Plain Zoo.

So they're pretty special.

And that's why every single one of them... gets this pretty special

They're a social animal, and you can see she's obviously enjoying the attention.

She's enjoying being rewarded for the cooperation. And you can see when we put

the feet up like this, we're checking the foot pad, we're checking the nails,

making sure there's no cracks in the nails that may require attention.

And essentially the bath is a practice of a number of different activities that

we need to do with the elephant from time to time.

Phew, so much could be achieved with one bath.

All right. Good.

All right. Just like we check the feet and all this sort of stuff, we ask for

their trunk up, we check the mouth, make sure the colour of the mouth, the

tongue is a nice soft pink colour. There's no issues with her teeth.

There's no cracks or breakages in her tushes.

Asian elephants can eat up to 150 kilograms of food a day.

So dental hygiene is also vitally important for the health of an elephant.

So some female elephants have very small tusk -like appendages there. You can

see with canolae, I've broken that one on the right side previously.

That's starting to regrow through now.

So they're not a true tusk with Asian elephants. It's only males that grow the

tusks. Very good.

So the bath itself is not sort of, you know, a bubble bath and a rubber ducky,

but it's essentially a daily once -over to ensure that everything's in running

order, all the elephants are moving well, feeling well, and making sure that

a daily basis we're constantly building and maintaining strong relationships

that allow us to work in such close proximity.

All right, Tong Dee, let's go.

While Tong Dee and her herd finish off their bath time inside, out... their

paddocks are being spruced up, ready for a brand new day.

Look at that lot.

It's fair to say it's a pretty exciting time for everyone.

Perched high on the slopes overlooking Sydney Harbour is one of Taronga's more

curious but wary animals.

She's big, isn't she?

With a wingspan of up to three metres and weighing in at around 12 kilos, the

Andean condor is one of the largest flying birds in the world.

And Canira uses every bit of that immense size to be the

undisputed star of Taronga's free flight birds.

Vultures are facing enormous pressures all around the world. Some species have

declined by as much as 99 .9 % just in the last 15 years alone.

Kinera is one of the Andean condors that was bred here at Taronga, and I've been

around her for her entire almost 13 years.

And although she's really large, we find she's one of our more cautious animals.

Unlike most birds that rely only on keen sight to find their food, Canira has a

very keen sense of smell, which can help these cautious carnivores find food

from up to two kilometres away.

In the wild, they are a top -order scavenger. They're nature's clean -up

They clean carcasses extremely well, so there's very little left to decay.

Her diet is obviously animals.

It's a meat -based diet. A lot of that is small things like mice, day -old

chicks, kangaroo mints that we can turn into little riffsoles.

But today, mealtime will look a little different.

So today she's getting a nice large meal, the chunk of kangaroo. This is

probably at the bigger end of the meals that she's received.

And it'll be nice to give her a chance to, you know, really pick that clean.

This supersized meal deal will encourage Kinira to express her natural

instincts. And looking after this particular fine dining feast.

is keeper Chris.

This here is the torso of an eastern grey kangaroo. So our full -time butcher

the zoo has been able to sustainably source kangaroos, a protein that we use

throughout the zoo for most of our animals as well because it's readily

available. So we have the arms, we have the rib cage that's been cracked open

and the organs have been removed. For a bird that really needs to shape her beak

on bone, this is going to be really good for her health -wise, but also really

enriching because her beak is designed to tear all the skin and the flesh and

the hair off those bones.

And then getting into all that nice sinew and all the different rib bones,

there'll be bones in her forearms here and here, and there's still a lot of

meat, which is good. So she'll get some nice, delicious kangaroo meat. A very

rare steak.

All right, let's go have some breakfast.

Hopefully that is a good enticing breakfast for her.

Not so fast.

So she's a little tentative of this. Wings are out. She's ready to go.

With seven Asian elephants residing at Taronga Western Plains Zoo... Steady.

What a good girl.

...it takes a lot of planning and preparation to keep their paddocks neat.

This is one of our larger paddocks out here in Dubbo and every morning we have

to come out and set that paddock up for the day.

And so it involves raking up a bit of sort of old hay and then, you know, it's

hanging up hay bags, putting our browse, scattering some fruits and vegetables,

things like carrots that we scatter around to encourage movement around the

entire exhibit.

And it really wouldn't be a day in an elephant habitat without one unmissable,

unmistakable, ever -present ingredient.

You can see obviously there's a lot of undigested material in here. So

only eat, elephants only digest 40 % of what they eat. So a lot comes out the

other end undigested. And that's one of the sort of ecological functions for

elephants. They're, you know, nature's ultimate gardeners.

Incredibly. Elephants are instrumental in keeping their forest rangelands

healthy, eating and dispersing seeds up to 65 kilometres from their original

tree. By the time we're finished today, this trailer will be very full.

Look at that light.

Keeper Brad clearly knows his stuff.

And who wouldn't when you're shoveling a few hundred kilos of it?

every day.

But enough about what comes out.

Let's talk about what goes in.

The elephants here only eat about half the volume of what a wild elephant

The food that we have, commercially derived hay and things like that, are

higher nutritionally than wild branches and grasses and sticks and so forth.

So we need to come up with novel ways of getting the elephants to spend more

time eating less food. And one of the hardest things to do with elephants is

find... things that we can use that they can't destroy.

And so we need something a little bit more robust for the boys. The boys can

destroy the hay bags with their tusks.

And so this poly pipe does the trick, and then the elephants can access it

through the holes. And obviously, by containing it in there, it takes these

elephants a little bit longer to eat that portion of hay than would just

it on the ground.

So in addition to the hay and the other enrichment activities, we also use

these. There's a pineapple plant. So we source these from southern Queensland.

They'll rip this off and then put it into their mouth. And it's a good source

roughage in their diet, good for their teeth, good for their digestive tract.

And then, yeah, we pick up the rest as it comes out the other end. Well, I

we were bound to get back to the other end eventually.

Taronga's Sydney vet team is transporting six -year -old gorilla

wildlife hospital.

We're investigating a couple of swollen joints that he's had over the last few

months. But the movement of the van is starting to make Mwamba move too.

His rate went up a little bit too, his respiratory rate. And that's the last

thing anyone wants to happen inside this confined space.

Could we have the lifters, please? Any movement? We'll come in straight back in

here.

The team need to get Mwamba, the baby of the gorilla community,

intubated and under full anaesthetic immediately.

All right, so we're going to bring him in and we're going to put him head in

towards me. Ready? One, two, three.

Okay, let's get him attached because now's the time where he's going to wake

That should be the right place.

Mwamba's up at the hospital. We're getting all his monitoring equipment on

There's a lot of hustle and bustle and so on. We want to get him stable on the

anaesthetic. With that, Emma, I think he's fine.

Andrew, a specialist at reading X -rays and ultrasounds, has been called in to

help with the examination.

So we're going to start going through his procedure now that he's stable on

table. He has, I'm pretty sure, has had a slightly swollen knee and a swollen

elbow.

But his abdominal hernia is where Andrew wants to start.

So Andrew's going to have a look at Mwamba's belly button. You can see his

button just there.

He's going to have a look with the ultrasound.

Sometimes the keepers are seeing a bulge in that area and we're investigating

whether he's got a hernia or not. The hernia is really just a gap in the

where there shouldn't be one.

If that gap is too large, Mwamba's intestines could push through and

get trapped by the muscle wall.

We want to make sure it's not something that he needs any treatment for.

So this is the abdominal wall.

Yeah. There's just like a tiny bit of fat that kind of pulls up.

Yeah. Very small gap, like 1 .2 millimeters.

So very small, yeah.

So now it leaks the intestine around the wall. So this is intestine right here.

So then that's the fat around it. So it doesn't come anywhere near the wall to

extend to it, which is great.

With the hernia now ruled out as a problem, Frances and Andrew turn their

attention to Mwamba's legs.

What do you reckon of that one?

I think these ones are also a bit swollen compared to the other side, so

might indicate that there could be some degree of arthritis.

So that would be likely the face of his big toe, yeah. The face of the big toe,

and there's more fluid in that than expected.

Yep. We might start with him on his back and just take all the pictures, and

then we'll have to turn him over to get ready for natural. Yep, I like it.

Everyone out.

X -ray.

I think that was in spirit tree, but... I think still there's probably a little

bit more increased soft tissue opacity compared to there, which is what you see

when there's more effusion.

Thankfully, Mwamba's bones are fine. X -ray, everyone clear?

But it appears there might be some fluid in his joints.

Oh, I'm going to be X -raying everything.

And as for this young gorilla's feet... It's not amazing, is it?

No one has the answer yet as to what is causing the swelling and tenderness.

It's mealtime at Taronga, and today, Kinera, the Andean condor, is

being served up a gourmet breakfast to remember.

There she is. She's watching.

A specially sourced kangaroo carcass.

painstakingly prepared by her keeper, Chris.

I think she'll mostly be interested because it's a new and different thing

the environment.

Most of our animals, or most wild animals, are overly cautious of new

the environment because they're not sure if they're safe or not. So she'll

probably pick at it a little bit, and then I think she'll get pretty excited.

Hey, girl.

Conera usually eat, well, like a bird, just small portions.

So today's carcass feed is a real treat, specifically designed to get those

carnivorous juices flowing. Cheers.

So we decided that we're going to put it up here on one of her top higher

perching options.

mostly so that she can use more of her habitat than just walking on the ground.

They do like to walk around, but when we arrived this morning, she was perching

up high, so it's not uncommon for her to be up in the air. But yeah, she doesn't

often get fed like this up here, so hopefully that is a good enticing

for her.

They do say when it comes to fine dining that presentation is everything.

Hey, release it!

It's a curious but cautious start.

Because she's not interacted with this food item before, she might not be aware

that it even is a food item.

OK, maybe presentation isn't everything.

The cautious animal gets to live another day.

When her wings are out, that was her showing that she's a little tentative of

this. Wings are out, ready to escape.

She's ready to go.

But as we see, the more time that she spends interacting with her, the more

brave she gets with that. And you can see that she's going back for some more

now.

So this here is what we were really hoping to see, that out in the wild with

full carcass, she'll be getting that head deep inside to get all to the juicy

bits that are in there.

Yeah, Conera's really using her head now.

So she's finally figured out that she sticks her head in. It's a little bit

easier to get all to that meat.

In the wild, they would gorge feed and then they might not eat for another day

or two while they're roosting up on the mountain.

I'm really happy with how this has gone as it's the first time that we've done

this for her, but she's figured it out. So yeah, couldn't be happier.

I reckon she's feeling pretty good too.

Well, we could ask her, but really.

One shouldn't talk with one's mouth full.

Got my code.

Here you go.

And speaking of mouthfuls... Well done, buddy.

Over in the Great Southern Ocean's habitat, there's another thirst on the

for another curious creature called Kobe.

It only takes a minute inside either of Taronga's two zoos... to be mesmerised

by the sights, smells and sounds of the zoo's many residents.

Yes, they can be a shock to the senses, but they're also the most fascinating

forms of communication.

While we're not at the Dr Doolittle stage of being able to talk to all the

animals,

We've done a lot of research into how different animals communicate.

Dr Ben is Taronga's resident animal interpreter.

Animal communication has a huge bearing on their life. It's about how they

do everything from raise their young, find a mate, defend their territory.

It's quite often used to build affiliation between individuals and we

chimps where they groom each other, there'll be quite a hierarchy of who

who in order to establish those sorts of bonds and relationships between

individuals. The great apes, the gorillas and chimps, are our closest

relatives. In fact, we share 98 % of our DNA with chimpanzees.

So we share a lot of traits, but smiling isn't one of them.

Even amongst other primates, the signals can be quite different to in humans.

The smile is quite a threatening display with them as well. If they're smiling,

it can indicate stress and a threat at an individual rather than a happy, let's

come and play.

These visual cues are used by the primates to avoid things getting more

physical.

In the animal kingdom, fighting is really costly and most animals don't

get into a fight. And so all these ways of displaying and establishing

dominance, particularly amongst males that we see, is a way to get the

information across without having to get into a fight.

And one of the great examples that we can see here in the zoo is our lemurs.

Ringtail lemurs are from the islands of Madagascar. They live in small, multi

-male, female groups, and the females are the boss. During breeding season,

ringtail lemurs will engage in stink fights. For us, we can't smell it, but

another lemur, it's definitely very pungent.

What they do is actually they bring their tail forward in front of them and

they'll use these scent glands here on their wrist to embed the scent onto

tail. They flick it around over their head and then they start waving it at

another lemur.

Their scent is like a very complex bouquet of smells and it tells a lot

that lemur in particular.

So if they want to be the best...

smelling, so they can attract those females because females will only choose

highest ranking or the male that has the best genetics.

All this communication, whether it's sights, sounds or smells, doesn't just

happen between animals of the same family either.

You might see a bird listening in to a primate, for instance.

So they're actually gathering information beyond their own species,

about the environment in general. There's all these different adaptations

animals have found to be able to get information across to each other and get

information from the world as well.

Unfortunately, some of the information being gathered is not always music to

ears.

Oh, so peaceful.

Anyway, more about that later.

At the wildlife hospital, Taronga's youngest gorilla has been undergoing a

series of x -rays to try and find the cause of his badly swollen joints.

We're going to be x -raying everything.

But the x -rays haven't revealed any obvious issues.

It's not amazing, is it? There's no significant obvious change.

I'm seeing a lot of changes with arthritis.

But overall, it looks really good.

What's not really good is that there's still no answer as to what's causing

Mwamba's swelling.

Andrew, we haven't done the medial of the left stifle, but do you think it's

worth doing that? You've ultrasounded it.

Yeah, I think it's fair that we could hold off, yeah.

So visiting specialist Andrew moves on to the ultrasound.

This is mostly fat, so I'm not seeing a significant amount of joint effusion.

Again, no obvious problems with Mwamba's knees.

Looks like everything's pretty smooth.

Or his feet, which means no nasty surprises for Mwamba's keeper.

Beck. There's no horrible radiographic changes in his joints. OK, so, like,

then causes, like, his lymph and stuff? Well, he can still have soft tissue

changes. Yeah, right. So it would still be painful. But it doesn't have to have

so many changes. Yeah, OK. Well, that's good, then. There's no... Yeah, OK.

Everything is good news.

The verdict?

Like so many other six -year -olds, Mwamba might just be experiencing...

Growing pains.

Mawamba's our youngest male gorilla at the moment. He's only six.

He's got a lot of growing to do. He's still immature in his body size.

Prepare the stretcher.

We will consult with the immunologist again and just say, hey, here are all

blood results.

Got any other suggestions?

You know, where do we go from here if it gets worse? So we'll just have to track

how he goes.

Everything looks great.

He's going to be a little bit groggy, a little bit sleepy for a little while,

but otherwise he's looking good. Get that in as far as you can. One, two,

I'm happy. He's back in the house. The family's happy.

And like none of this ever happened, Mwamba is soon back living his best

Are you guys good?

So Mwamba's just up the back there. It's been about a week since his general

anaesthetic and his visit to the hospital. He's doing a lot better.

He's much improved, walking around well, running around with the boys like

nothing has happened.

He's definitely far better this week. He's big and he's beefy and, yeah, it's

cool to see. He's a beautiful little boy. He is. I love him. He's so cheeky

yeah, he's cool. He's a cool gorilla.

For Taronga's keepers, it's always a big occasion when their newbies try

something new.

Come on, Kobe. Here you go.

Well done, buddy.

Oh, so cute.

All right, come on, little man. And today, one little fur seal pup is

to take a big life step. So this is Kobe, and he's just turned one, and he's

just starting to learn the ropes.

Kobe had just been weaned from his mum. He's had to learn what it's like to eat

fish, which sounds silly with a seal, but he'd had milk his whole life, so it

was a bit of a transition for him. But he's now eating well. There you go, bud.

At the moment, his favourite fish is whiting.

And he's also starting to learn that the whistle means that he's going to get

fish. So that's some of the basic training that we started with him, and

a really effective tool for us.

when we're teaching him new things.

You're a bit full.

Fur seals, by nature, are really quite inquisitive. So as Kobe grows up, the

marine keepers like Ange are always looking for fun new ways to keep them

stimulated.

We really want to get Kobe comfortable because he has to be prepared to see new

people, new colours of clothes and different size groups.

He's getting to the point where we think he should be okay to come out and just

spend a bit of time with his trainer.

We'll try to make it a fun experience for him, maybe with some toys and some

food, and we'll keep it really brief so that it's really positive for him.

Kobe is about to make his first public appearance, where he will experience a

whole heap of new sights and sounds.

I'm a little bit nervous. It's his first time, and any new situation with an

animal can be a little bit...

nerves for us too, but sometimes that's a good thing as well.

But he won't be going it alone.

He'll be joining another family favourite, his dad.

And a nice big good morning from Bondi as well.

Bondi is one of the zoo's many success stories.

Bondi was one of our rescue seals. He was found washed up on the iconic Bondi

beach with some pretty severe shark injuries all over his body.

Luckily for Bondi, though, he does have a second chance at life and also has

contributed to our very special breeding program.

Nice work, mate.

And it's that breeding program that has brought Kobe here, following in his

dad's flipper step.

One of our most recent additions is Kobe.

What's up, little man?

Then what we're going to be doing today, something very special, is Kobe's first

time coming out here in front of all of you. Should we go in the big pool?

Now let's put our hands together for the beautiful Kobe.

For a first appearance, you could forgive a little stage fright.

Kobe, what up?

What up?

Hey, for you, buddy.

That's awesome.

Kobe.

He's like, who has the fish?

Kobe.

Not me.

Mr. Hey, there you go.

But Kobe's debut goes swimmingly.

Oh, you're so brave, buddy. So brave.

That's awesome.

Experiencing these new sights and sounds feeds the field's natural curiosity.

And this little pup is taking it all in his stride.

So I think Keeper, Ange and Kobe are heading out the back. Now let's put our

hands together for Kobe. Didn't he do a great job out here this morning?

Debut done.

It's fair to say Kobe has made a real splash.

Little seal coming through.

He was fantastic.

I'm so proud of him. He's done everything that we were looking for, and

can just continue to build on that and build his confidence out there even

Next, the symphony of sound. It's quite uncanny.

That is Taronga. That's one of the ways they show how clever and attractive they

are to a potential mate.

whether it's lions roaring or snoring or gibbon singing.

All of the many animal behaviours on display at Taronga are actually complex

forms of communication.

And when it comes to verbal communication, there's one particular

Taronga that might sound very familiar.

Birds are perhaps one of the best -known vocal groups in the entire animal

kingdom. Because of the competition between individuals to attract mates, we

see the development of incredibly elaborate songs in some species.

Possibly one of our most iconic residents here in Taronga is Echo, the

Lyrebirds are mimics.

And so they listen to sounds in their environment and incorporate them into

their own song.

By the sounds of it, this one's been playing a little too much Space

and that's one of the ways they show how clever and attractive they are to a

potential mate. The more different bits that they can incorporate in and the

more complex they make their song, the more attractive they are.

Here in Sydney, where Echo gets to listen to a lot of human noises as well,

incorporated some really incredible and what we would think quite complex

sounds.

It's quite a realistic baby cry that it gives.

But also amazing things like the sound of our fire alarm. It's quite uncanny.

Relax, everyone. Please stay where you are. This isn't even a drill.

It's just Echo.

He's trying to build complexity in his song, and so he's bringing in these

sounds and trying to sound interesting.

Like anybody, you want to be a bit interesting and dashing, and that's

what he's trying to do.

Wow, mission accomplished.

You've won me, Echo.