Gaining the animals' trust
is an important part of every keeper's job.
Come on, Jim, station.
Come on.
Good.
It's called conditioning,
and it helps staff get up close and take care of animals
if they're suffering from health problems.
Well, our male Komodo Naga is lame.
We're going to try to take some x-rays
to see if there's any orthopedic problems.
It's also used to help train animals
to interact with keepers in a safe manner.
Hello.
Do you want to do a session?
And down at the seal enclosure,
keepers are using these techniques
to help with their important sea lion breeding program.
Hello, Tani.
Krystal has been working with Nala,
our Australian sea lion,
on training her for ultrasound
so we can check on any potential pups.
So Nala is already in.
Nala, let's go.
This is Nala,
and she's a 10-year-old Australian sea lion.
She was born here at the zoo.
She's a bit of a favorite amongst us all.
She's absolutely amazing.
Australian sea lions are the only seal species
that lives in Australia.
They're found off the coast of southern and western Australia.
And their numbers are really, really low.
They're a highly endangered species,
so the more we can have a lovely breeding population here,
the better it is for the species as a whole.
Good for us to start? Cheers.
Her safe place is the water.
So we always want to give her a lot of room.
It makes her feel a bit safer.
She can just go to the water
if she feels uncomfortable at any time.
And if she doesn't want to participate,
we won't push it at all.
We want this to be really positive.
Today Lyndsay's not only training Nala,
she's also teaching keeper Krystal a few tricks.
All right, Nas, begin.
So you just let me know when you'd like me to come in.
Yep.
We have her up on here
so that we can get this pretend ultrasound probe
to simulate what the real one would be like.
All right, Nala.
All right, sit.
You're all right to come in, Lynds.
Yep, coming in, Nala. Coming in.
Here I am. Touching.
You gonna touch?
Monitoring any future pregnancy
is an important requirement
so vets can intervene should something go wrong.
Excellent.
Nice work, Nala.
Luckily for keepers, Nala is an excellent student.
Nala absolutely loves to learn.
She's very cooperative and very switched on,
very intelligent.
Umm, she's all comfortable on your end?
She's really relaxed.
So what we want to do is, maybe we'll bridge soon,
do a short one.
So as soon as you bridge, I'll pull away.
Good girl.
So that bridge just tells Nala
that she's done the right thing and that fish is on the way.
If you want to give her a break at anytime, too,
that's quite okay.
Good girl.
One of the hardest things for seals
is to stay still, so we like to break it up
with a bit of energetic stuff as well.
Ooh!
Good girl.
All right, I am going to bring her back if you're okay.
That's good.
And then we might just try for a bit of a longer one.
Maybe not quite as long as what we were trying for before.
Ready. That's it.
Here we go. Touching.
That's it.
It's maybe sort of a decent length,
but not as long as what we were pushing for before,
and then we'll probably leave it at that, I think.
Yep.
She's done really well.
Good girl. Excellent.
Good job, sweetie.
All right, might leave it there.
Cool.
While the ultrasound training
went off without a hitch,
keepers are hopeful her upcoming introduction
to the male sea lion Charlie goes just as smoothly.
Stay there, Nala.
Good girl.
The playful sea lions have a great relationship
with their keepers.
But on the other side of the zoo
lives a collection of animals
that could kill their keepers in a heartbeat.
A fact never too far from keeper Chris's mind.
So this is our off-display
venomous snake holding room.
This is where we keep all of our venomous snakes
when we're not housing them on display.
At the zoo we have about a dozen or so venomous snakes.
Most of those are native Australian.
But the most recognizable snake
comes from Southeast Asia.
So in this enclosure here we have a monocled cobra.
And they're quite a vocal snake.
This species of snake could be responsible
for hundreds, if not thousands of deaths every year.
Their venom is quite toxic, and they're not afraid to inject it.
But what it's made up of is largely neurotoxins
that very quickly stop our neurons firing
in our nervous system.
So that can mean that the heart stops beating,
the lungs stop breathing
and all of those little neurological processes
can break down very, very quickly.
So I've got an interesting little snake in here.
This is a species of snake that not many people know about.
Now, this here is called a broad-headed snake.
It is another venomous snake,
and it just goes to show that in Australia
it's not just the big dangerous snakes
that we need to be aware of.
It's these smaller cryptic ones that still pack a punch.
The broad-headed snake has a few records of human death.
There isn't a specific broad-headed snake antivenom,
but tiger snake antivenom has shown to be effective
to treat bites of this species.
But up the other end of the room
lives the most venomous snake of all.
So in here we've got a species of snake
that plenty of people have heard of before
and never had the privilege of seeing.
But they're a very beautiful snake.
These guys are at the top of their game.
Inland taipan.
Considered the world's most toxic land snake.
We've got three in this enclosure.
We've got two boys and a female.
They're only found in western Queensland
and parts of South Australia.
So their venom is said to pack the punch
whereby one bite can be enough
to knock out 200,000 mice
and approximately 100 full-grown men in an individual bite.
Others right up there in the count
would be the eastern brown snake
and the tiger snake,
and those two species have been attributed
to probably most Australian snake bite envenomations,
whereas this species is simply encountered
far less frequently than the others.
If you see any snake here in Australia,
you are really best standing still,
letting the snake pass you by.
If you're far enough away from it,
it's safe to walk away,
but definitely don't try to catch a snake,
definitely don't try to kill the snake.
Just enjoy the moment that you've had with the snake
if you can contain yourself enough to,
and then as I said
if it's in your house or in your yard
to definitely call a trained professional
to come and safely remove that snake.
Thankfully not all snakes
at Taronga are stone cold killers.
Hello, darling. Hello.
Like Olive, the olive python.
Found all across northern Australia,
these gentle giants can grow up to 4 meters in length.
Oh, you're all right.
You're okay.
But Olive has a history of chronic back pain
which is getting worse,
and when your back is more than 3 meters long,
the question is, how do you find where it hurts?
Every year Taronga welcomes new animals to their family.
Some have just been born, while others have just arrived.
But today they're celebrating an animal
that has been around Taronga from almost the start.
Good morning, guys.
Good morning, Ezzie.
Hey, Lance, where are you going?
Here, mate.
Here at Taronga we have two giant tortoises.
They are giant Aldabran tortoises.
This is Lance.
Lance is our male Aldabran tortoise.
Just giving him a bit of a neck scratch at the moment.
It is something that he appears to like,
for use of a better term.
You know, he really tends to stretch his neck out.
We really like to get into all his nooks and crannies.
The Aldabran tortoises are from the group of islands
off the coast of Africa.
A lot of people have heard of Galapagos tortoises.
But these are the other existing giant tortoises
that are found on the earth today.
As an adult they don't have any predators really in the wild,
but as a young tortoise
there would be several animals that would take them.
Lance would weigh about 180 kilos,
but if he was to walk into any water
he would float like a cork.
The structure in their shell
is a honeycomb that has air pockets.
So they're able to actually bob in the ocean,
and that's how they would have inhabited different islands.
You might notice these lines that are over his shell.
This is one what we refer to as a scute.
Often in snakes and lizards we have individual scales.
Tortoises and turtles, they have individual scutes.
And these will shed off as the tortoise is growing larger.
The skin on the Aldabran tortoise
is so tough and so leathery.
It's to make sure that it is not getting damaged
by the harsh land that they're living in.
It really is a very strong leather.
It's just like, it's stronger than your boots.
Are you hungry this morning?
I tend to work a lot with snakes.
It can be a bit, you know, a bit whippy,
and these guys are very controlled.
Good girl.
And they just go about their business
just slowly and steadily.
They're not an aggressive animal,
very easy to feed, and no real hazards when it comes to them.
But if we think that the Aldabran is getting too close,
you just take a step to the left or the right,
and it takes them ten minutes to reach you anyway,
so you're out of danger.
Now, Lance is a sort of a young bloke.
He's at approximately 70 years of age.
And Esmeralda, she's the old dame of the zoo.
She would have arrived here in the zoo in the forties,
just after World War Two.
They do guesstimate that some giant tortoises
can live to be 200 years of age.
So she might only be in that middle age,
so she's right in her prime, really.
And with her birthday just around the corner,
the keepers have a very special surprise
for this 103-year-old dame.
Olive the python has a history of chronic back pain,
which is getting worse.
But when your back is more than three meters long,
it's a hard thing to manage,
so it's off to the animal hospital
for some urgent x-rays.
She has had some x-rays in the past
that have not looked great,
but we just want to check
that she is in the best condition possible
and she's doing well for her age.
So hopefully the x-rays come back good
and there's no further spinal changes for her.
Now, I don't know what her personality is like.
I don't know if she's bitey.
I will just treat her like a wild snake.
Yes.
We've got a 17-year-old olive python,
and Liz is going to restrain her while I inject her
to start off her anesthetic.
So that we can radiograph her.
Harmless or not, the team know
whenever you're handling a snake of this size,
you can never let your guard down.
A ten-kilo python is extremely strong,
so the way that they get their prey is they constrict them.
She's just ten kilos of muscle.
So, yeah, it's not so much her bitey bit,
it's more her wrapping herself around.
And ten kilos doesn't seem that big,
but in a python it's quite hefty.
Sorry, love.
See how she's...quite strong.
She's bending the needle.
Okay, that will do for now.
That will sedate her somewhat.
So the time is 10:49.
A couple of years ago she had her spine x-rayed,
and in her neck region in a snake
she had some changes on her x-rays
where her spine was, ahh, had extra bone in it
and it was quite stiff.
The team are hoping that today's x-rays
show no further deterioration,
but judging by Olive's recent behavior,
they fear the worst.
Esmerelda, the giant Aldabra tortoise,
is the oldest resident of Taronga.
She's been at the zoo since just after World War Two.
Being here at the zoo for over 70 years,
I think Esmeralda would have met more people
than any other animal here at the zoo.
She's met politicians, movie stars,
music stars, sports people.
She's seen it all. She's met all the VIPs.
I mean, I remember visiting the zoo as a young bloke,
and I can specifically remember seeing Esmerelda
because she always had a different shell
to the other tortoises that were in the exhibit.
So I, I have fond memories of Esmerelda
as a young boy, definitely.
And today Esmerelda turns 103,
so Stu has organized the nutritionist team
to make something to celebrate the occasion.
Quite a concoction, I think.
Very colorful.
Very full.
Lots of green leafy vegetables.
All the vegetable families here,
tomatoes and açai, peas, broccoli, capsicums.
Yeah, some beautiful squash
and tomatoes shaped in flowers.
Very, very exciting.
And head chef is Michelle Shaw,
Australia's first, and only, zoo nutritionist.
Okay, final finishing touches.
Does it look good?
It does.
She's going to love it.
So this is the birthday cake for a wonderful animal,
a very special animal.
This cake is based on her natural diet,
but we've just designed it in a way that's special for her.
So she might get this variety of vegetables three times a week,
she gets meadow hay,
which we've made the base of the cake for,
and that's a really good high-fiber thing.
We've got her carrots.
Candles.
Candles. Great idea.
Oh, look at that.
Oh. Oh.
Okay, we're ready to go.
Oh, she's gonna be thrilled. I can't wait.
I'm salivating just thinking about it.
And, like all great surprise parties,
Esmerelda has no idea.
Taronga Zoo is taking part in a breeding program
designed to boost numbers
of the endangered Australian sea lion,
and the first female this season to be mated
is one of the marine team's favorites, Nala.
She's absolutely amazing.
She loves learning new things.
She's so playful.
Wash.
Hey, that's it. Keep going.
Good girl, Nala.
Nala is being paired with Charlie,
who's waiting patiently in another pool
at the opposite end of the Marine Precinct.
You did good.
And the two couldn't be more different.
Nala here weighs about 60 kilos, um,
whereas her boyfriend Charlie weighs about 260.
What would you like to check with Charlie today?
We will just do his general checks,
but we'll just double check those gums
where he had those little scratches
and that scratch on his flipper.
Okay.
Just to make sure it's healing up.
Before they breed,
animals at Taronga must be in good health,
so Charlie needs to undergo a quick physical exam.
Are you going to unlock?
Yep.
Charlie, rock.
Good boy.
All right, Brad, what I might do is I'll put him in the water.
In the water.
Charlie, water, water.
Luckily Charlie is as well behaved as Nala,
because you can't give a sea lion a health check
if he doesn't want one.
Hello, big fella.
Would you like to come out?
Good.
That's it.
Come over here, big boy.
I love everything about Charlie.
Australian sea lions are one of my most favorite animals
in the entire world.
I've been working with them for 23 years.
He's big. He's gorgeous.
He's just like a big, wet dog.
Have a look at the gums first.
Check his mouth? Okay.
Just checking behind the two lower canines
where he had a little rub mark.
Checking that has worn down a bit there, Brad.
Charlie plays quite rough with toys,
and so we just keep an eye on his teeth.
he had a little scratch on one of his gums earlier this week,
but it's all healed up and pretty much gone.
Good. Down.
Good boy. That's it.
Over. That's it.
We want him to be comfortable
being touched all over
so if us or the vets need to have a look at them,
but it also gives us the opportunity to see
if there is any tenderness or if we see a different response
from day to day,
we know that potentially there could be a problem,
but this is all part of their conditioning.
We want them to be pretty much bomb-proof
in all of their health care.
I think someone was mentioning
he had some rake marks on his flippers, Brad.
On the rear ones.
So his rear flippers here are unique in the fact they,
a lot of people are surprised
by these little nails that they have.
And these are used for grooming that fur coat.
So exposing them by bending their rear flippers over
exposes them.
They can groom and scratch
pretty much most of their body with them.
Oh, nothing too bad?
Good.
It's all good news for Charlie,
and he's been given a clean bill of health.
So Nala, our beautiful female Australian sea lion,
is about a quarter the size of Charlie.
She is going to come down and have a play date with him.
They will spend maybe the day, sometimes overnight,
depending on how they're both feeling.
Because we're hoping that they will contribute
to our Australian sea lion breeding program.
With date night looming,
the question is will Charlie and Nala find love?
Esmerelda the giant tortoise
is turning 103,
and Taronga staff have organized a surprise for her.
We're so happy to see you, Stu.
That looks amazing.
I'll jump over if you guys want to pass it over to me.
Just watch out where you're walking here.
Esmerelda has been here the longest amount of time,
more than any other animal here at Taronga,
and so for that we are going to give her a special treat.
We're gonna do something special for her.
Here we go.
Happy birthday, Esmerelda.
Happy 103rd birthday, Stewy?
103rd birthday for Esmerelda.
103.
You know what, she doesn't look a day over 95...
She doesn't. ...to be honest.
We do like to put on a special sort of celebration
for these milestone times
and especially for our very iconic animals,
and Esmerelda is one of our most iconic species
in the reptile department.
A real variety today.
Oh, yeah, endive and broccoli and so many goodies.
Beautiful hibiscus flowers, one of their favorites.
Which is one of the best foods for them as well,
hibiscus flowers, yeah.
Yeah. Definitely.
Esmerelda came to the zoo in 1947,
and her diet previous to that would have been, you know,
she would have had been having a natural diet,
really high-fiber plants and things.
Coming into a zoo environment,
she would have received really high fruit diets in the past
and they would love it,
but it's like us eating chocolate
every single day, right?
So it causes them to have digestive upset,
they get really gassy and bloated,
but you know, we've learned a lot about nutrition
in the last 100 years.
She's absolutely loving that celery, isn't she?
Absolutely. Listen to that crunch.
Yeah.
Oh, it's a very happy day for her.
But, you know, I don't think we can say
this is the happiest birthday for her.
Next year might be better.
You know, we always think next year's going to be better.
See, but now you've set a standard.
So next year we're gonna expect more,
and the year after that, more.
So just be careful.
Challenge accepted.
Okay, great.
Many happy returns, Esmerelda.
Olive, the olive python, was brought
to the animal hospital with chronic back pain.
Now it's a waiting game, as the anesthetic takes effect.
Let's have another look.
So it's been 15, 16 minutes.
Nice and still there.
We are concerned about her,
and we've had some other snakes with similar issues.
So once they have this syndrome, it tends to progress
and then to the point where they can't move very well at all.
Oh, no, oh, no, oh.
She's a little bit, yeah, she's quite sedated,
but she can't support her own head, but she's trying to.
So I reckon we can try and get her out.
As with any spinal injury,
the staff know they must handle Olive with great care.
Big girl.
They feel heavier than ten kilos.
Liz is gonna change sides and I'm gonna intubate her.
That is a lot of snake.
You may have to hang on to the back.
Because she will probably start moving.
You can see that there is lots of very, very fine teeth.
Their teeth are quite sharp
and they're all very fine, just like fish bones.
So if you get bitten, it would be quite painful.
There we go, beautiful.
Very snug.
Every part of this procedure takes great skill.
So what we're going to do now is connect her up
to the anesthetic machine, put the anesthetic gas...
I can see her tongue coming out.
...on.
Shall we turn her just to find her heart
and then we can put the Doppler on her?
Yes. Yep.
We're going to look along here,
around this area to look for her heart,
and then we're going to attach a Doppler to it
because you can't use a stethoscope to hear it,
and this is a good way of monitoring her anesthesia.
So we need to make sure she's breathing,
and we need to make sure her heart is of course going.
I reckon it must be around here.
Actually I'd turn her up.
There you go.
That's her heart beating.
Her heart rate sounds really good.
Nice and steady.
Take that off.
It's always nice to hear the heart.
Okay, so we are going to take her in and weigh her.
It's rare that Olive has been sedated,
so the team take full advantage while she sleeps.
She is 10.9 kilos.
And we will take her back and measure her.
Yep, measure her.
Straight out along the floor.
We're measuring her just for the records
because snakes keep growing.
So for data, but also to assess her body condition
compared to what a wild snake would be.
Pretty long, isn't she?
130 at her vent.
Importantly the team now know
Olive's exact weight and length.
What they don't know
is which part of her three-meter spine is injured.
Like the huge collection
of animals on display,
Taronga's staff come from all walks of life.
Oh, lost it.
Come on, Miles, go get it.
I never really liked seafood even from a young age.
I absolutely hated the smell of it,
and now here I am elbows deep in seafood every day.
But I am just really lucky.
I feel really lucky to be able to work
with these incredible animals every day
and inspire visitors about how important they are
in the ocean they live in.
So for me, I'm an ungulate keeper.
So an ungulate is just a fancy name for a hooved mammal.
So here at Taronga Zoo I am looking after the bongo,
I look after giraffes and I also look after pygmy hippos.
I used to work, funny enough, as a butcher
before I started as a zookeeper.
A butcher to working at the zoo, but I tell you what,
I know a cut of meat like you wouldn't believe.
I am very green in regards to the environment,
but at the end of the day I'm still a carnivore,
I like to eat meat, so saying that I'm a butcher
has no disrespect to the animals or the environment.
It just means that I know them more inside and out
than other keepers, you know.
Erica, can you release that for us?
I was one of those annoying little girls
when I was sort of two or three years old
was determined to be a vet,
but I don't think, you know, certainly not at that stage,
and not even through vet school,
imagined that I will be lucky enough to work in a zoo,
but I have always been interested in wildlife,
so I feel really, really lucky
to be working in an environment like this.
It's such a great zoo, so very lucky.
You wouldn't want those teeth sinking in
to anything other than a nice piece of fruit.
Hi.
What are you doing?
Best job in the world, hands down.
I guess most people,
it's just a reaction of wow, that's so cool.
Umm, people are, yeah, pretty impressed,
but we're very lucky.
This meerkat just here, his name is Kumho.
So he's actually part of our largest litter.
We had six meerkats in a litter,
and he is what I call a pickpocketer.
So any time you sit down in the exhibit,
he loves to come up and explore what's in your pockets.
If you ever have a pen,
your pen will only last a few seconds in your pocket
before he's scratched it out.
He's pretty disappointed, I think,
because I don't have a pen today.
We have 18 meerkats.
So we have a huge mob here.
Um, I've worked with all but two since the day they were born.
So to me they all look completely different,
believe or not, but, um, yeah,
to most people obviously they all look exactly the same.
What are you doing?
What is Louasi doing?
He's so noisy.
But it's not only the living animals
that the team at Taronga care for.
This here is like Taronga's morgue,
and what we do every day is conduct post mortems
to find out cause of death of any animals in our care.
I think there were some signs early on
that I might have been cut out for this job.
Always wanted to be a vet since a little kid.
I didn't think I'd end up working
in the post mortem room here.
I knew I was probably going to end up
working with the zoo in some way.
I think just having that fascination for animals
and a bit of the morbid kind of gave the game away.
And how they work.
Because you can't really determine how an animal works
unless you get right in there.
Here at Taronga Zoo
I'm the supervisor of the reptile amphibian department.
And here in my hands is a little female southern corroboree frog.
She's a gorgeous little frog.
One of Australia's most iconic species
and one of our most critically endangered,
and at the moment they're on the,
right at the brink of extinction.
There's a lot of interesting quirks
about the frogs and also about myself.
But one of the interesting things about these little guys
is how we survey for them.
We actually yell at the habitat where the frogs are
and if there's a male sitting in the nest,
he calls back at us because he thinks we're another male.
He is saying get away from my girls,
get away from my pond, this is my area.
So we give off, I guess, a real loud, deep "yeah,"
and then these little guys
give of their little "rr, rr, rr, rr" back at us.
Yeah!
Rr, rr, rr, rr.
And that's how we know how many there are in the wild,
where they're positioned, and so forth.
Back at the wildlife hospital,
vets are trying to find the exact position
of Olive's chronic back pain
and check if there's been any further damage
to her already painful spine.
She has some changes in her spine,
so sort of like arthritis,
and it makes the part of her spine
quite stiff in the neck region,
and so we're doing repeat x-rays on her today
to ensure that it's not getting worse.
The reality is if it is worse,
she may not be able to survive.
Okay, so we are going to start the x-ray.
Yep.
And so you want to go from head first?
And dorsal, ventral.
Yes.
Okay.
X-ray.
There's quite a lot of the animal to x-ray,
so we have to do a lot more x-rays on snakes in particular.
Do we want to put tape on there so you know where we are going?
At 40 centimeters.
At 40.
If we just make sure we have our routine down
and make sure we do it properly, it works out well.
Number two.
Yep. X-ray.
We can turn her off at the neck.
That's much better.
We can go to the next one, number three.
Well, we do in this job do a lot of radiographs.
That's part of our diagnostic work.
She's a bit twisted at the front.
And that's how we determine, you know,
what's wrong with the animal,
if there is anything wrong or not
and rule out certain things.
Next x-ray. Yep.
They are a really good diagnostic tool,
so really taking them to me is quite interesting.
Yep, that's... that's good.
Good? Yep, all right.
So we've finished taking
our radiographs of the python,
and so now is just the wait for her to recover.
We've given her a reversal agent,
but she has also had anesthetic gas,
and so she just needs to metabolize those anesthetics
until she wakes up, and it can be a number of hours,
and we're giving her the heat
because that will speed up her recovery.
Being a reptile,
they can't control their own body temperature,
so this is a, it's called a bear hugger.
It's full of hot air,
and she's also on top of a heat mat as well,
and that will maximize her recovery.
She looks all snug under her little doona.
Little blankie.
Just got to get her a pillow.
So today has gone really well.
It's always a pleasure to work
with a beautiful snake like an olive python
because not many people get to do that.
Just got to have a look through the radiographs
to see what kind of changes she has in her spine,
and if the changes she had from about four years ago
are the same or if they've progressed.
But all will be revealed shortly
when I can have a look at her three meters of spine.
And as the first x-rays come through,
it's not looking good for Olive.
Today is a really exciting day.
We're hoping to introduce Nala, our female Australian sea lion,
with Charlie, our big male Australian sea lion.
We are hoping that they are going
to absolutely love each other from the get-go,
but it's not always the case, so it's going to be exciting
to see how they interact with each other and how things go,
which is really exciting.
But first, Nala must get to the other end
of the Marine Precinct, and the only way is to walk.
Good girl. Ahh, what a good girl.
Where are we gonna go?
What are we doing?
So, it's not a very easy task to get Nala down to Charlie.
Nala's exhibit is at the top of a set of stairs
on a completely different level.
Thankfully Nala is trained to walk outside of her exhibit.
We take her outside regularly for her own enrichment,
something different for her to see,
and she does that quite happily
because she enjoys going out for walks.
Good girl.
What's out here?
Eh?
Who are we going to go see?
She definitely will know what's happening
when we get in the proximity of where Charlie is.
She'll probably smell him before she sees him.
Charlie probably has no idea what's about to happen.
He's probably in his own mindset just enjoying a day in the pool
and all of a sudden a female is going to arrive,
so that's going to make him pretty excited.
Nice work. Up you go.
Good girl.
So it's really important for us
whenever we introduce two animals,
we want to make sure both animals are happy
and comfortable throughout the entire process.
If they're not comfortable or happy,
we simply separate them again
and we try again at another date.
But fortunately for Charlie and Nala,
love is definitely in the air
and the water.
The introduction between Charlie and Nala
has been as fantastic as we could have imagined.
They are both really comfortable in each other's presence.
There's no aggressive behavior,
anything to suggest that it's going to escalate,
which is great.
Definitely feeling the love.
Charlie has even been clucking,
with is a natural vocal or sound that the boys make
to let the girls know they're very interested in them,
which is really great for us to hear.
And Nala's been quite receptive to that.
So a lot of the nose-to-nose touching
that's really interesting and great for us to see.
Absolutely stoked that this has gone so well.
It's what we aim to do in the breeding program
of this incredibly rare species.
So to see two seals getting along so well with each other
really gives us high hopes for our breeding season.
So the loved-up pair will be left overnight
for some private time.
Fingers crossed we'll be able to end up
with an Australian sea lion pup, which is the ultimate goal here.
Yesterday Taronga's vets
conducted a series of x-rays
on the zoo's 17-year-old female olive python.
She recovered from the anesthetic really well
and she was awake.
But there is a large water body in her enclosure,
so we didn't want to send her back to her enclosure
just in case she went swimming overnight
and had a nap under water.
So we allowed her to recover here in the hospital
and she has stayed nice and warm,
recovered really beautifully overnight.
She is bright and alert now,
and we're happy for her to go swimming if she chooses,
and so the reptile keepers are going to come down,
collect her and take her back to their collection.
But first, keeper Emma is keen
to get the results of the x-ray,
which Gabby has spent the night
painstakingly stitching together.
So here is Olive, her radiographs,
and we're just going to go down her body,
and I'll show you some of the changes that we've found.
So you can see in this radiograph
that you've got lots of detail of the individual vertebrae,
so up here you can see a little space between each unit
and then along here they all start to join together
and you also get increased bone development underneath.
And it's reflected on this view looking down on her back
where you get these widening, which are called paddles.
It is actually getting worse.
That's...
No one really knows what causes this in snakes.
It doesn't just happen in pythons.
It happens in venomous snakes like rattlesnakes overseas.
We used to think it was just from handling,
but the fact that it's found often
in venomous snakes that are not handled very often
makes that unlikely.
So what we are going to do with Olive
is we're going to put her on a treatment trial
of anti-inflammatories, which is essentially pain relief,
and you are going to monitor where she,
how she uses her enclosure.
If she starts moving around with the pain relief on board,
that tells me that she was painful.
Yeah.
If there is no difference,
then we may have to consider her quality of life
because we can't help her move around more.
If she's just spending all her life in one area
and not doing anything,
I think it's a welfare issue that we have to consider.
So we'll reconvene in about a week
when she's finished her medication.
Okay. Okay.
We're going to pop her back.
It's a sad result for Olive,
who's called Taronga home for the last eight years.
Prognosis for her is not great.
The fact that it's deteriorated over the five years
means it's probably gonna continue to do so
no matter what we do, unfortunately,
and with her welfare being our primary concern,
if we think that her quality of life is poor
or that she is in any kind of discomfort,
then euthanasia will likely be the end result.
It's been two months
since sea lions Charlie and Nala
spent a quiet night together.
So her rear flippers will be here,
uh, front flippers will be here, rear flippers will be there.
If possible it would be better for you
to be on this side.
We can shuffle that however you want.
Just so she's got a clear, clear access to the water.
Vet Larry has come down to her enclosure
to conduct the first ultrasound,
to see if the mating encounter was successful.
Sit.
What is happening out here.
Hey, sweetie. Hey.
Thankfully we've been doing some training sessions
with Nala in preparation for this
in the hopes that we are going
to be potentially seeing a pup today.
Fingers crossed, that's the dream.
Hey, beautiful girl.
Come here.
Good girl.
Ready to go when you are, Larry.
Good girl.
So we've got a really good scan
of her whole abdomen here.
Good job.
Nice work, Nala.
She is an incredible animal.
I mean, look at her, just perfect.
That's it. Good girl.
Nothing obvious yet.
I mean, I can see organs, her abdominal organs.
I've got a great image of her bladder.
So it would be good, actually, if we turn her around, so...
Okay.
Just this whole set-up, so she's facing that way.
Yep. All right.
With no luck on the right side,
Larry is hoping the left-hand side gives him a better view.
All right, Nala, sit.
Come on.
Nala, that's it. That's it.
It might be handy if she is wetter, but let's see.
Good girl. That's it.
It's always exciting.
I mean, you know, and always hopeful,
and I suppose, you know, when you don't see something,
in the back of my mind, I'm going
have I missed it, have I missed it?
And you know, there is always hope that maybe I have.
Oh, hang on a second.
Just hold on.
And suddenly something catches Larry's eye.
So I'm just scanning her left side of her abdomen,
the lower abdomen here,
and just not far from the bladder
I just spotted a sort of a circular vesicle.
Okay, so that's a still image.
So that there
is very likely to be an embryonic vesicle
with the little embryo in it.
So this is very exciting.
I think she's pregnant.
Potentially we are seeing something?
Yeah, I'll show you guys.
Are you kidding? Really?
No, I'm not kidding at all.
Wow, that's incredible. Wow.
So, you know, that's very typical
of what you would expect with an embryonic vesicle,
and that little spot inside is probably the embryo.
So I've just measured it there,
and you can see it's only 2.4 by 3 centimeters.
So it's only small, very early days.
Pretty, pretty good evidence that she's pregnant.
Yay.
I definitely didn't expect it.
Obviously we always hope, and being this early on
we haven't seen any signs of her being potentially pregnant,
and obviously you wouldn't because it's still so early,
um, but yeah, this is incredible news.
Sea lion pregnancies
are just a few weeks shorter than a human's,
so it's still early days.
But Nala's pregnancy is a glimmer of hope
for an endangered species.
It is fantastic news for,
obviously for Nala and the keepers and us,
and so having this pregnancy
and you know, hopefully a little pup in the future
is going to be a very, very important contribution
to the conservation program for the species.
Captioned by Side Door Media Services