♪ ♪
WOMAN: Oh man.
When you get a dive
that you can just
kind of relax
and watch your animals' behaviors.
I'll have people ask me like
Oh, fish don't have personalities, do they?
Oh they totally,
all of them have personalities.
Sometimes I try to join the school of fish.
But I don't think they'll let me in their clique.
I don't think I'm cool enough.
(laughs).
(theme music playing).
(squawking)
JEN: We usually get here pretty early in the morning,
it's dark out.
Badru's sleeping right now.
NARRATOR: Outside, the team prepares a special start to
21 year old Badru's day.
JEN: One of his favorite things is fresh dirt.
He's very excited about it.
It's pretty cute.
Horticulture added a bunch of clay for us,
but we're gonna mix it up, make it almost like a thick oatmeal.
They will be able to roll around and have fun in
their nice little play bath.
It needs to be the right consistency,
'cause I want him to be able to sink it a little bit.
I love to do extra stuff for Badru.
Totally makes it worth it when that alarm goes off at 3:00 am.
♪ ♪
KORI: Good morning. Hi Badru.
Did you have a good night sleep?
(laughs).
JEN: Badru is the best rhino.
He loves people, he is so expressive.
KORI: You ready for the day?
JEN: As keepers, we use enrichment to help him do more active things.
If you watch Badru when he goes out on his wallow, it's great.
(bellows)
NARRATOR: Rhino spa time.
JEN: Look at him go.
Oh, he's seen the bath.
And he's heading straight for it.
This is exactly what he would do in the wild.
So, it may just look like Badru's playing in the mud right now,
which he is, but it's also extremely important for his care
and for his overall health.
All rhinos need the mud bath to help protect their skin from
sunburn or parasites.
It makes me so happy to see Badru having fun.
And as keepers, we're always trying to find ways to make
their habitat the best possibly it can be.
NARRATOR: Behind the scenes,
the Disney science team prepares a special device.
ANDREW: Badru is getting his very own activity tracker today.
The activity tracker is an anklet,
which is basically just a belt that has a pouch on it,
which contains a health tracker and a GPS unit.
The activity tracker here is very similar to any type of activity watch
you might wear to track your exercises or your steps,
which just measures whether he's running, walking,
if he's wallowing in the mud.
It also has a GPS unit which will tell us exactly
where Badru is, in his habitat.
So we're trying to see how he's behaving,
which spaces he's using.
We'll use that information to improve the way we manage him.
KORI: Black rhinos in the wild are critically endangered.
Their populations are dwindling due to poaching.
The more we know about Badru and black rhinos in general,
the better for their survival.
ANDREW: This is really just the first step.
We're hoping that rhinos all across the country will wear
these activity trackers and we're gonna be able to see the differences,
how rhinos behave, how active they are across
a variety of different institutions.
And we'll be able to improve rhino care across the country.
BRANDY: Hi Badru. Come on over here, buddy.
Hi.
You ready to get some tasty treats, huh?
KORI: We have been building up to this, I'm really excited.
It's been weeks of work, working with him to make sure
he's comfortable with what we're doing.
We're gonna get him in a stall, do a little bit of training,
make sure that he's comfortable with us.
BRANDY: Badru. Good boy.
KORI: And then as soon as we know that he's good,
we'll go in, put the tracker on and then we'll send him out
to the yard.
BRANDY: So I have my eye target here,
which is just a stick with a plastic lid on it.
I'm gonna hold it up to his eye and that tells him which
direction I want him to turn his body.
Good job, Badru.
So now I'm gonna ask him to hold very still and then you guys are
good to step up to the rhino.
KORI: Okay Badru, gonna put this on your foot.
BRANDY: So his eye is very wide right now,
so you can see the whites of his eyes,
which is not something you can see a lot of.
He's a little uncomfortable with the current situation.
KORI: I'm gonna back away. BRANDY: Okay.
We're just gonna give Badru a little break right now.
He's very nervous what you're doing.
KORI: Rhinos just get wide eyed when they're a little nervous.
It could be Badru is just worried,
and that just is where we step in as keepers to
make sure he's safe, we're safe.
NARRATOR: For Badru to help other rhinos with this pioneering study,
his keepers need to wait until he's ready.
BRANDY: We take time to build a trusting relationship with Badru
and it's very important to maintain that trust.
KORI: He's a little jumpy now, so we're gonna take a step back.
NARRATOR: On the Gorilla Falls Exploration Trail
lives a very special resident.
COURTNEY: This is our family troop of gorillas,
they're a big group, all of our kids were born here.
So we have Lilly, she's our oldest, she's 12.
There she is.
Lilly is probably my favorite.
She loves to interact with the keepers,
she and I have a really good relationship.
She's very smart, really funny,
grabs up all the toys and takes them for herself.
She's so cute.
And then we've got our two youngest,
Grace has just really started climbing the trees.
She's climbing the tree to get that smear board there.
And she gets super, super high up into the trees.
And then Ada, she was born last year.
Lilly, she's taken on more of a big sister type of role,
she does a little bit more protecting,
a little bit more teaching.
Interesting to watch her develop those maternal care behaviors.
Such a sweet gorilla.
You gonna lay down back there, Lilly?
You not feeling well this morning?
NARRATOR: But an ongoing health issue causes concern.
COURTNEY: You're okay.
We know them very, very well,
so I can, at a glance,
know whether Lilly is feeling well or not.
She'll kinda hunch over, holding her stomach,
kinda crouched down.
Ever since she was young, she's had some stomach issues.
I, so many different times to find what it is that's making her sick.
It's sad to watch her be that sick and
not be able to do anything.
She looks like she might vomit again.
Oh poor thing, you're okay.
NATALIE: I've known Lilly since the day she was born.
She's the same age as my daughter.
We've been doing a lot of research to find a way to make Lilly feel better.
And so we did a CT scan and the CT scan showed that she has
gas bubbles inside of her intestinal wall as well as outside of her bladder.
NARRATOR: Doctor Natalie and the team refuse to give up on Lilly.
NATALIE: In humans, one way to treat this is to do surgery,
but they've been moving away from that and
they're are starting to use hyperbaric oxygen.
But, this is a very unique thing to do,
we've never really known of anyone who's tried this in a gorilla.
So it feels like the stakes are higher and that makes it
just a little bit more scary.
COURTNEY: Come here Lilly, will you come up for us?
NATALIE: Lilly's gonna be inside of this
hyperbaric oxygen chamber with pure oxygen.
It's gonna ago into her bloodstream,
push those bubbles out and we're really hoping that
this treatment is the solution.
COURTNEY: It's really hard for us as keepers to see her
like that, just to know that there's nothing that we can do.
NARRATOR: This treatment could be Lilly's only chance of improving.
COURTNEY: Honestly, she's one of my favorites, I love her.
I just really hope that we can find a way to make her feel better.
♪ ♪
KELLY: It's a big number, we're very excited about it.
NARRATOR: A big day dawns on Discovery Island,
for some of its most beloved residents.
KELLY: We have a birthday party going for our Galapagos tortoises,
they turn ten years old today.
The Galapagos tortoises are my absolute favorites,
don't tell Bruce the Catfish.
NARRATOR: To help her buddies celebrate double digits,
keeper Kelly prepares a birthday cake,
tortoise style.
KELLY: From our animal nutrition center,
we've got a big block of what we call herbivore gel,
basically got all their vitamins and minerals in there,
in a nice kind of a cake-like form.
The sweet potato and the strawberries on top are
just an added bonus.
I think it's gonna be really big hit with them.
NARRATOR: Here come the birthday boys.
(crickets chirping)
KELLY: Nothing happens fast with a tortoise.
Come on everybody.
We have six juvenile Galapagos tortoises,
their names are Phantom, Dracula, Frankenstein, Mummy,
Creature and Wolfman.
(lightning strikes)
NARRATOR: It's a reptilian monster mash.
KELLY: They all have this Halloween-type theme.
Come on, Mummy.
They're going to live 100 plus years.
They definitely have a little bit more momentum than
some of the older tortoises.
Creature was the first one.
(laughs).
Come on, you're gonna miss the strawberry.
Come on, ridiculous.
Do you wanna try to get, Wolfman, off?
Being that they're babies,
they don't really care about personal space,
they don't really care where they're supposed to be.
Wolfman being sideways on top of Frankenstein
doesn't surprise me at all.
NARRATOR: Bon Appetit, Wolfman.
KELLY: A lot of people don't think reptiles have personality,
but they definitely do.
Creature has sweet potato all over herself.
WOMAN: You guys are gonna need a bath.
KELLY: Oh totally.
What are you doing, Dracs? You want another strawberry?
You didn't really get in there.
On the islands of the Galapagos, the plant life that's there,
anything that's really bright,
that's what attracts the tortoises in.
Hibiscus flowers.
Mimicking that here, we do the strawberries,
we've got the sweet potato.
Pretty much any color that they see,
they're gonna go after.
NARRATOR: But Phantom eyes something even more appealing.
KELLY: Come on Phantom, this way.
Phantom, where are you going?
You're going the wrong way.
Go that way.
NARRATOR: His favorite keeper.
KELLY: Okay.
He just wants scratches.
You want birthday scratches?
NARRATOR: Dracula also wants a bite of the action.
KELLY: See, now he's gonna stand up for you.
I want pettings too.
Galapagos tortoises do something called a finch response.
Dracula's standing up and standing very still,
in the wild, there's a specific kind of bird that
will dance in front of them and illicit this response.
NARRATOR: On his native Galapagos,
Dracula would stand tall so the finches can clean off parasites
and bugs that may annoy him.
KELLY: For them to have not experienced that in the wild,
but to know how to do it from their hatch,
is pretty cool.
We can celebrate their tenth birthday and then 100 years from now,
watch back when they were so little and so mischievous.
It’s a lotta fun to get to play with the Galapagos tortoises.
(overlapping chatter)
NATALIE: Remember, keep everything quiet,
slow and gentle.
NARRATOR: Backstage at Gorilla Falls...
NATALIE: When Lilly's feeling badly,
it really makes your heart break,
because you can just tell how uncomfortable she is.
So you've got these big gas bubbles that are trapped,
they're right next to the bladder.
If these bubbles get bigger, it will get worse.
She's just gonna be in constant pain.
And we're really hoping that this treatment is the solution.
NARRATOR: Lilly gets ready to travel the 90 minute long
car ride off site.
NATALIE: Today's adventures are gonna be a little bit different.
NARRATOR: Her ground-breaking treatment will take place at
an equine center, a facility with a chamber
big enough to cater to gorillas.
NATALIE: Normally when we're working on gorillas we have
them fully anesthetized.
We can't have her asleep in the chamber,
so we're gonna have to get her there awake,
have her calm and pretty much still during this procedure.
NARRATOR: So keepers must first separate Lilly from
her close-knit family.
COURTNEY: First thing that's gotta go correctly,
we actually have to split Gino off.
Close the yellow hydraulic.
And then Azizi and Cory and then Kashada.
Okay, locks are good.
NATALIE: You've got this social animal,
to take her out, it just makes it hard.
We're just gonna sedate her a little bit to try to get her
into her crate and keep her calm and happy the rest of the day.
NARRATOR: The sedative acts quickly.
NATALIE: Breathing nicely.
WOMAN: One, two, three.
NATALIE: Soon as you guys are situated, I'll give her the reversal.
I was really fretting about this part of it.
Reversal's going in.
Okay.
Once she's awake and sitting, then we can get going.
WOMAN: Sitting up.
Doctor Natalie, she is sitting up.
NATALIE: She's sitting up.
(laughs).
That's amazing. Sweet girl.
Let's go.
(laughs).
WOMAN: Watch your feet. WOMAN 2: Okay.
NARRATOR: Safely in the truck, Lilly travels over 90 miles to
the Equine Performance Innovative Center in Ocala.
COURTNEY: Doing a great job, she really is.
NATALIE: That's our girl.
This is a very unusual step.
I don't know of anybody who's done
this treatment in a gorilla.
It just makes you a little bit more concerned about the outcome.
We may be the first to try this.
Putting Lilly into this chamber,
you're increasing the atmospheric pressure,
so it's as though we were to put a scuba diving outfit on her and
sending her down into the ocean.
She's going to 60 feet.
NARRATOR: Slowly, the air pressure around Lilly will increase,
hopefully compressing her body
and removing the gas bubbles in her abdomen.
NATALIE: What we're hoping is the gas bubbles get really small,
so they actually then go into her bloodstream and eventually,
she'll breathe it out.
That will alleviate any of the discomfort she's getting.
But when we close it, we're not gonna have any access to her.
Worst fear is if she's going to get upset and start shaking,
so we've got all these mattresses,
so that even if she does that, she can't tip herself over.
KELLY: Okay, one, two, three.
Here we go.
ALBERTO: Now we're gonna 30 to 45 minutes, depending on her.
NATALIE: Okay. COURTNEY: Thank you.
NARRATOR: Lilly's air increases to three times normal pressure.
ALBERTO: So basically what she's doing right now,
is she's diving in the ocean, going down and
then she's feeling the pressure.
COURTNEY: Didn't expect to be so nervous.
I'm hopeful that this is gonna work,
she'll get to be reunited with her family and
everything will be great.
NATALIE: The whole morning has been just nerve wracking,
each step of the way.
NATALIE: Ooh. It's exciting.
This disease is very uncommon,
if we can treat this without having to do anything invasive,
that's gonna be ground-breaking for us.
ALBERTO: It's like she was in bottom of the ocean and
now she slowly coming up.
NARRATOR: It's time for Lilly's air pressure to
return to normal.
ALBERTO: Opening, ready?
COURTNEY: Hi Lilly.
NATALIE: She's got the last seeds.
How are you?
She's like, I don't know what you guys are doing.
That was crazy, wasn't it?
It was crazy. She's perfectly calm.
COURTNEY: Oh my gosh. NATALIE: Really amazing.
COURTNEY: You're such a good girl.
(sighs).
COURTNEY: You did such a good job.
NATALIE: Oh boy.
(sighs).
WOMAN: Now she's decompressing.
NATALIE: Now I'm decompressing, absolutely.
(laughs).
Are you ready to go back home?
(laughs).
Yeah, now we can head back.
Now we just hope it worked.
COURTNEY: Hey sweetie. Ready to go home?
I think she's gonna go back and tell her family a lotta stories.
WOMAN: You're okay sweetie.
It's okay.
NARRATOR: As Lilly starts her long journey,
back home, her family waits for her return.
COURTNEY: They're such a tight-knit family group,
that it's always hard to remove one of them.
Even if it's just for a few hours.
They recognize that that animal is missing.
WOMAN: One, two, three.
NATALIE: Good girl. COURTNEY: Nice job.
That's a good girl. You did so good today, Lilly.
You happy to be home?
NARRATOR: After six hours of separation,
Lilly prepares to reunite with her family.
COURTNEY: They're ready for you. They missed you.
WOMAN: We're gonna open everything up,
so we'll go ahead and open hers.
Good girl.
Yeah, you ready? You ready?
They're coming. She's coming.
Aww.
(grunting)
NATALIE: She looks pretty amazing.
She didn't miss a beat today.
COURTNEY: There's Lilly.
It's always fun to reunite them after a procedure.
Oh hi, Gino. What's going on?
Lilly, did you tell them what you saw?
She's telling 'em all about it.
(laughs).
COURTNEY: We're all just really hoping that
it's gonna be the thing that's gonna help her.
NATALIE: The keepers are really gonna know what's going on with Lilly.
They really know her behavior, so if the treatment works
she's gonna be feeling great.
But, we are gonna eventually do a CT on her to see if
the bubbles are actually gone.
NARRATOR: In 11 weeks, Lilly will have her follow up scan
with Doctor Natalie.
Until then, her team closely monitors her health.
NATALIE: This kind of an endeavor takes an incredibly talented and
dedicated team of professionals.
Being here at Disney's Animal Kingdom makes
things like that possible.
KORI: We tried to put the activity tracker on Badru,
but he wasn't quite ready for it.
NARRATOR: Backstage at the rhino barn...
BRANDY: Come on over here, Badru.
We gave Badru a little break, Badru's more relaxed now and
he looks like he's in a better place.
COURTNEY: So Badru, right.
NARRATOR: The team hopes Badru is ready to wear his tracker and
help other rhinos.
BRANDY: Good job. Let's try that again.
KORI: If you're ready, I'll step up.
BRANDY: I'm ready. KORI: Coming up, Badru.
Just gonna work my way down.
I'm here Badru, gonna put this on your foot.
Reaching in.
BRANDY: Okay. KORI: Ready?
Gonna reach around.
BRANDY: Okay. KORI: About to secure.
Okay, looks good.
BRANDY: Good boy. ANDREW: It's on?
KORI: Yeah, excellent.
ANDREW: Nice. KORI: Yay, Badru.
And he's showing it off. The epitome of fashion.
So this is great, this is exactly what we wanted to see.
Badru is just walking down the corridor,
he's then heading right out to exhibit with this activity tracker and
we get to see how he reacts to that.
ANDREW: The anklet's fitting him perfectly.
And we're really hopeful that we can get a really
good understanding of his 24 hour activity.
So we're kind of breaking new ground here.
A lot of what we're doing with this research is possible
because of the relationships,
the trust that the animal caretakers have with Badru.
KORI: The goal for Badru is to wear this activity tracker
five days in a row.
Today is definitely a test to see if Badru can keep the tracker on.
♪ ♪
ZAK: The solar array that we have here is phenomenal,
it generates enough power to power two of our four theme parks.
It's a massive area of land.
Disney takes environmentality
really seriously, we wanna be as green as possible,
even better than just making green renewable energy.
We wanna provide habitat for wildlife that's here around our properties.
And one of the best ways that we can do that,
is plant plants that will support our native pollinators.
When we think about conversation,
we often times think of big charismatic animals
that are far, far away.
But the vast majority of animals on the entire planet are insects.
They really make up the backbone of biodiversity and pollinators
in particular are responsible for helping plants reproduce.
I see these insects and I wanna chase them down and
learn more about them.
(laughter).
ZAK: Get, ah!
Oh my God, there's another one.
Oh! I got it!
Every time you find one,
it's a new discovery and it's a new adventure.
That front vein of the wing is really strong,
it's like a flagpole to a flag.
So if you just gently pinch it, it doesn't hurt 'em at all and
you can really easily transport them.
Well let's put him down here and see if the wants to forage
or maybe he'll just fly away.
The Monarch butterflies they taste with their feet,
that way they can just land on it and they know whether
it's something they wanna eat or not.
Whoa! Gorgeous.
Oh, come on.
WOMAN: Did you get it? ZAK: No.
For Disney conservation, we wanna know that we're really
having an impact and that we have the data to back that up.
(screams)
Where'd it go?
We've documented over 70 species of butterflies that
make use of this space.
Get him! Get him!
What you got?
WOMAN: I got fritillary. ZAK: Oh nice.
One of my favorite things about Gulf fritillaries,
is if you look at the bottom side,
it's super reflective, it looks like a bunch of solar panel.
This way, they can flash to each other for communication.
WOMAN: Be free. ZAK: Aww.
(laughter).
WOMAN: Beautiful.
ZAK: The world is full of this life and oftentimes,
we're just so busy, we don't realize that it's there.
All we have to do, is take a moment to look and
it's right there, for us to see.
MARY ANN: We are on Sunset Savannah,
I dare say the best Savannah here at Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge.
(moos)
NARRATOR: Grazing animals,
rare birds and countless tiny bugs
call this pasture home.
Together, they create a flourishing ecosystem.
MARY ANN: I love this, because I get to be out and about,
hanging with the animals, outside.
Looks like our boys are in a loose little group,
our roan antelope so we'll pass by them.
Roan antelope are cool, because they don't take any guff.
They are a fight species, so usually they're stand off-ish.
This is Charlie.
He has a special place in my heart,
'cause my Grandpa Rook, his first name was Charlie.
Love my grandpa.
Charlie is great, he does like to approach and he's curious.
And the fact that he wants to interact with us is awesome.
NARRATOR: Charlie's care team notices he's not himself lately.
MARY ANN: We started to weigh him weekly and he is
consistently falling below the line of our other two males.
Our largest one is around 200 kilograms and
Charlie is around 158 kilograms.
Highly concerning to us.
We are starting to see his ribs,
we're starting to see hip points on him,
we wanna have a healthy layer of some fat and
muscle in these areas.
When you're giving them a smorgasbord of food and
you're watching an animal lose weight,
something is wrong.
He does not look correct.
His coat is also looking dull too.
I sincerely and desperately hope that he's gonna be okay,
because their health is, is our concern.
This is not just a job, so as a keeper,
and you can't figure it out, it's a failure.
They can't speak for themselves, we have to speak for them.
DEIDRE: Hey Charlie-boy, how you doing?
Don't be mad at me.
Sorry.
All right.
We're doing a diagnostic exam today to evaluate causes
for his weight loss.
What exactly could be causing him to have a great appetite but
not be able to maintain his body condition?
I can put the...
We don't take anesthesia lightly,
it doesn't go without risk.
We wanna be as efficient as we can and do our procedure
as quickly as possible.
So we're looking in his eyes, in his ears.
BETSY: His eyes are open.
DEIDRE: There isn't any things of concern.
BETSY: He looks good.
I'm feeling along all of his teeth and how they wear together,
if he has any points or ridges that can be a problem
for the ruminants to grind their food.
The teeth surface can be an indication of why
he's not keeping weight on.
Nothing bad, it's pretty typical.
NARRATOR: Charlie's teeth look good,
but the rest of his mouth still needs checking.
DIANNA: His gum color is pretty important,
it can tell you how well he's circulating peripherally.
He looks a little pale to me, he could be anemic,
that would make sense.
DEIDRE: Are you guys okay if we pull this leg out?
Okay.
(overlapping chatter)
DEIDRE: Go ahead and take a blood sample,
just to see how he is oxygenating.
Certainly anemia, which is a low red blood cell count,
could be contributing to the clinical concerns that
we're seeing today.
BETSY: We just put in a IV catheter and collected a blood sample,
it's very thin, kind of waterier than I would like to see.
So, I can tell even before we run the test that he is anemic
from looking at the sample.
His anemia is probably caused by parasites,
it's severe parasite infections that can cause weight loss,
muscle wasting, really severe disease.
We know that we have parasites in the pastures where he lives.
NARRATOR: Florida's subtropical climate makes
dealing with parasites a fact of life.
DEIDRE: We have such lush savannas,
that that's a perfect environment for our parasites to grow.
The particular parasite that can affect species like Charlie,
is a worm called haemonchus.
NARRATOR: Keepers give animals plenty of blood free browse to
reduce grazing from the ground.
And use natural pest control methods to kill parasites in manure.
And if one of them does become sick,
treatment is targeted.
DEIDRE: We have the technology to be able to test these
parasites to see what drugs that they're sensitive to,
so that we can be very strategic about what drugs we use.
Once we give his de-wormer, we'll be ready to wake him up.
BETSY: Okay, I'm gonna poke him.
Any reaction to that?
During the procedure, I treated him with an anti-parasitic drug,
we should see a drop in that parasite number.
Okay, Levamisole's in and then the iron,
I'm gonna give in a couple of different sites,
'cause it's a big volume.
So I'm treating Charlie today with an iron injection
and so the iron will help boost his ability to regenerate
those red blood cells.
Okay, iron's in.
Treatments are in.
DEIDRE: Thank you.
We've treated him today for those parasites,
we'll be following up to see what that parasite load looks
like and by then, we should have a clear plan of where
we're going with his care.
BETSY: Reversals are in.
NARRATOR: Charlie makes his first move to recovery.
And can now return home to Sunset Savannah.
DEIDRE: That was a great reversal.
BETSY: Yeah.
NATALIE: We're at half an hour after injection.
So far, so good.
NARRATOR: Lilly the gorilla arrives at the veterinary treatment room
for a scan to check her recovery,
11 weeks after her procedure.
NATALIE: Right, one, two, three.
Not that I can win-win.
(laughs).
Oh boy.
We're hoping we might not have to do this again.
Watch her like a hawk.
RACHEL: The CT is so important because it's gonna be the thing
that tells us whether or not we still have
those bubbles in her gut.
It's tense and it's exciting,
all at the same time, because none of this stuff has ever been
done on a gorilla before.
NATALIE: This is the time that I get nervous.
NARRATOR: It's time to find out the results
of Lilly's ground-breaking treatment.
NATALIE: I have both of them side by side.
So on the right is the old one and on the left is the new one.
You can see...
RACHEL: This is the old one?
NATALIE: Yeah this is the old one,
so you see that, where it's no part of the intestine.
So there were these two bubbles that we've seen for a while now.
Here, this is today.
And then as we scroll through...
Nothing.
RACHEL: Nothing as in we think...
NATALIE: No bubbles, yeah.
Mm-hmm.
To me, that is awesome.
RACHEL: Oh, man! NATALIE: That's pretty cool.
RACHEL: That's really cool.
NATALIE: It's nice to have a win; diagnose, treat,
get better, it's what we live for, right?
NARRATOR: Back to full health,
Lilly heads back out with her family.
NATALIE: Back here we've seen her gain weight,
coat is looking so much better, she's feeling better.
To me, that is awesome.
We know that hyperbaric oxygen treatment is possible.
This tool can be used for so many disease processes.
And this can certainly be applied to a lot of different gorillas.
COURTNEY: She is running around,
she's playing with her brothers more.
She's got this attitude about her that she did not have before.
She has become so sassy.
NARRATOR: After Charlie's parasite treatment,
he receives a visit from his loving keeper, Mary Ann.
MARY ANN: Charlie is looking way better,
we're getting some weight on him,
we've found some foods that he really, really enjoys.
He's got that thicker body,
so the fact that he's gaining weight and feels strong enough,
he's testing the other males out here.
And they're doing sparring, so this is how they learn.
And his body condition, we just weighed him the other day,
he was 198 kilograms.
That is spot on.
NARRATOR: But it's not just about checking how Charlie looks.
MARY ANN: I see a fecal, is this Charlie?
I think we got a poop!
We got a poop!
We're gonna be collecting a fecal on him to see if
we can check on parasite load.
Ah, now there night be several piles of fecal matter out here.
But, if it's warm to the touch, that's fresh.
I don't wanna brag, but not everybody gets to do this.
This is looking good.
Charlie, you are especially saucy today.
I might have to hold my nose.
I think our vet tech Pia's gonna be super happy to break
this apart and look for stuff.
Charlie, thank you!
PIA: This is so exciting...
(gasps)
It even says Charlie on it.
Today, I'm gonna be looking at Charlie's fecal,
our little roan friend.
I'm gonna be seeing if there are any parasites.
We're doing a special test called a McMasters,
which is actually gonna tell us exactly how many eggs are
per gram in the, in the feces.
There's a certain threshold of numbers that we're okay with per gram.
So, right now, I'm putting it on the microscope.
An hour ago, this was in the animal and now we're looking and
we kinda almost get a real time look of what is going on.
See if we can see any parasite eggs.
Oh, there we go.
There's one, right here is our little parasite,
it's a little egg right there.
Currently, I'm only seeing one, which is good.
We do see a low level of these parasites.
So the medication has worked, Charlie's parasite level is now
safe and no longer causing him any problems.
MARY ANN: So the fact that he's feeling better, I'm thrilled.
It's made my day.
Parasite load is much lower than it was,
it's in the area that the vets are comfortable with.
We can definitely see an improvement on
his body condition, he's hanging out with the group,
he's looking awesome out here.
We don't leave the job at work, the job comes home with us,
he come home with me.
That's how it is in animal keeping.
It's just great to see that everyone working together for
the welfare of that animal.
KORI: I'm curious to see how many steps Badru takes in a day.
ANDREW: Yeah.
NARRATOR: Badru receives a visit from the Disney science team,
to see if he's taken the first step to better rhino care
across the country.
ANDREW: If we went in the wallow, would he follow us?
BRANDY: He probably would, yes.
Is he going for the wallow?
ANDREW: No. BRANDY: Not yet.
ANDREW: Looking for more food.
BRANDY: He wore his activity tracker for the first time for
five days, which is a big deal for him.
ANDREW: Badru wore the tracker, no problem.
He didn't show any signs of discomfort, very comfortable.
We are super happy, this is exactly what we expected and
we're really excited to see what data we get.
This part has definitely been a success,
now it's time to take it off and take a closer look.
BRANDY: So he deserves this whole bowl of treats.
KORI: Right, you ready Brandy? BRANDY: I'm ready.
And Badru's ready too.
KORI: Let's see what it looks like.
All right, taking it off now.
There you go, Badru.
BRANDY: You did it buddy.
KORI: It looks good underneath the skin.
And around.
ANDREW: Thanks Kori.
It's a little soggy and a little muddy,
but the devices appear to be okay.
We'll plug into the laptop and see what we get.
BRANDY: We're really happy that Badru did everything that
we wanted him to do.
We're looking forward to finding out all the data that
we collected from him.
ANDREW: This is a huge moment, this is super exciting.
Let's see how the devices did.
So now that we've extracted the data off of the accelerometer,
we can see kind of a general picture of Badru's activity.
So here, he was actually really active,
we can see these high peaks,
he might've been trotting or running.
He relaxed a little bit here, so probably just standing and
we can actually see when he lies down.
That's really cool that we were able to pick up that information.
BRANDY: All this information that we're recording is just
more good information to have, so that we can take better care
of these rhinos on a daily basis.
ANDREW: So look, here's the session for Badru and we can open that up and look,
we can see a whole bunch of data points there.
So that'll give us an idea of how he's using his habitat space.
To I kinda see what Badru prefers in his habitat and
potentially use that information to make modifications that make
it the best possible space for him to spend his time.
KORI: This study just kinda brings it together as a whole
and helps us understand how black rhinos are,
what their natural habits are, what they like to do so that we
can make sure that they thrive and continue to be here with us
for future generations.
BRANDY: You're an ambassador for your species.
You're the best rhino. You're the best rhino.
Yes you are.
Captioned by Cotter Media Group.