Baby Pangolin vs. Feisty Ants Malawi Wildlife Rescue
Transcript
00:00 Of all the young animals in the special orphan care unit,
00:04 one is the most demanding and the most precious.
00:08 I just use this blanket because her claws and her scales can be a little uncomfortable.
00:13 It's Pango pup, a baby pangolin.
00:16 She was only three weeks old when she arrived at the center.
00:20 Staff have spent the last four months feeding her and taking her out for regular exercise.
00:26 Today Kondwani is on duty.
00:30 This feels a little comfortable for her because at this age they'll be hanging on their mother's back.
00:37 The team are hoping to get Pango pup back into the wild,
00:43 but first they have to show her how to be a pangolin.
00:47 She can't rely on milk forever, so Kondwani is teaching her to look for her own food.
00:54 A pangolin's menu is limited to ants and termites, and even then they're picky.
00:59 When I pick her and move her, it's a place where I found a spot of ants for her.
01:05 So it's just helping her to go there to the new spot to see if she'll like the ants or not.
01:10 So in this case she didn't like these ones, she just moved away.
01:13 So we just have to try again.
01:15 Hey Ko!
01:16 Hey!
01:17 I haven't seen little one for a while, I thought I'd check in and see how you guys are going.
01:21 Yep, there she is.
01:22 She's big now. Where are you going?
01:25 She's like, I gotta get out of here.
01:27 This is a very rude greeting, madam.
01:29 Pango pup is the first ever baby pangolin to be hand-reared in Malawi.
01:35 Like all the pangolins who arrive here, she was rescued from the clutches of wildlife traffickers.
01:41 These extraordinary creatures are poached for their scales,
01:45 which are used in traditional Chinese medicines and African folk remedies.
01:50 Come on pango pup, don't be so fussy. Those are good ones, I promise.
01:53 In the wild, pango pup would be looking for food at night.
01:58 But finding ants' nests, even by day, is tricky for Kondwani and Tori.
02:03 When they're very small, mums leave them in the den and they just come back a couple of times a night and feed them.
02:09 But at this age she would be going out with mum, she'd be riding on her back
02:12 and she'd be kind of eating ants with mum to learn what's good and what's not.
02:16 Here, eat the eggs.
02:19 They're good for you.
02:21 Good girl, look at you eating all the ants.
02:25 The difficult thing about pangolin is that they have to eat the ants fresh.
02:29 If we dig up the ants and take them to pango pup, she won't eat them.
02:33 And that's because once an ant nest is disturbed, they produce a chemical called formic acid.
02:38 When that formic acid gets too high in the colony, the pangolins can't eat them.
02:42 They don't taste good, they make them feel unwell.
02:44 So the pangolins have to get in there, eat as many as they can, before the ant nest realises it's under attack.
02:49 As pango pup gets used to finding her own food, the team will bring her out for longer sessions,
02:58 hunting for ants all over the wildlife centre.
03:01 But right now she's tired and wants a lift home.
03:06 She knows what she wants and she knows how to get it.
03:10 She likes her milk and she likes it in a certain way.
03:13 She obviously only likes particular ants and when she wants to go home, she wants to go home and that's it.
03:17 You've got to go.
03:18 Pango pup needs to go on her daily ant hunt.
03:26 And this time it's down to research manager Olivia and assistant vet Abel.
03:31 But Olivia has another agenda too.
03:38 OK, so just give me a second, Abel. Let me just write this down then.
03:41 OK.
03:43 She seems ready.
03:44 Yeah, she's ready.
03:46 So just look for the ants for her.
03:49 OK.
03:50 Yeah.
03:51 Pango pup is down to one milk feed a day and increasingly reliant on her natural diet of ants.
03:58 Those are big ants, hey?
03:59 Yeah, big ants.
04:00 Olivia is keeping a record of which ants she eats.
04:05 It's part of a research project to help save these vulnerable creatures.
04:10 So what we're doing here, it's a bit weird, but essentially we're trying to collect some of the ants
04:15 so we can look at them under the microscope and figure out what species it is.
04:18 The idea being to start to get an idea of what species she likes eating, what species she doesn't like eating.
04:24 And then we can start to find out where these species are on the wildlife centre grounds,
04:28 which would really help us with a lot of our pangolin rehabilitation work
04:31 and then also for assessing release sites throughout the country.
04:35 There's so little known about pangolin diet, especially for the species of pangolin.
04:38 And that's why we really need to find this out.
04:40 OK. Are you ready, Abel? I might need your help.
04:43 She's still eating, hey?
04:44 There are numerous species of ants in Malawi, and every pangolin seems to have a personal preference.
04:54 I wouldn't mind showing her some other ants because I'm just curious now that she's only been eating like this one species.
05:01 They introduce her to different ants.
05:06 She doesn't want them.
05:07 OK, well, I'll collect these ones as rejected.
05:10 Those big ones are horrible to collect, though, Abel.
05:12 They're terrifying to collect.
05:15 Pango pup has now found some ants she does like, but they're retaliating.
05:21 They're biting her.
05:25 Her face and her belly are obviously very soft tissue, so you have those hard scales around her back
05:32 and when she's eating, the ants crawl all over her back, but they do get into her belly, into her armpits.
05:36 Sometimes you even see them in between the scales.
05:38 That's why she then rolls into that ball and kind of goes through the grass, and that pushes a lot of them off of her.
05:44 I do not like ants. I'm not a very big bug person.
05:52 They definitely make me nervous because these ones bite a lot, and they hold on when they bite.
05:58 So you really have to, like, pick them off of your skin if they start biting.
06:02 At last, Pango pup finds some medium-sized ants that are tasty and don't bite.
06:09 Is she eating?
06:11 She found them on her own.
06:15 Yeah, on her own.
06:16 Is that what he's promising?
06:17 Yeah.
06:18 Pangolins have to wait weeks or even months before revisiting an ant's nest.
06:23 So Pango pup will soon have to leave the centre and go somewhere with a much bigger supply.
06:29 Olivia's research will help decide where she'll go.
06:33 Usually you walk around and you completely ignore the little ants on the ground,
06:37 and you start to see, like, how much diversity there is in such a little area.
06:41 It's almost like piecing together a puzzle.
06:44 I'm really nerdy about research.
06:46 This is where it's really fun.
06:52 Less than two hours' drive east of Lilongwe is Kuti Wildlife Reserve,
06:57 30 square kilometres of protected countryside.
07:00 Tori is here to see a VIP.
07:04 Hey, Abel, how are you?
07:06 I'm good, and you?
07:07 Good. How's she doing?
07:08 She's doing fine.
07:09 Oh, nice.
07:10 It's Pango pup.
07:13 She recently moved to Kuti, one step closer to a wild release.
07:18 Hi, little one.
07:19 How are you?
07:20 Hi.
07:22 So this is the first time I've seen Pango pup in about a month now,
07:27 so since she's come up here to her kind of bigger bush area.
07:31 And she looks fantastic.
07:32 Abel and the team have done a really great job with her.
07:34 She's putting on weight, she's really bright and active,
07:37 and she just, yeah, just wants to get out there.
07:39 So I'll hand her over to you.
07:41 Thank you.
07:42 Let's get her out there to get some dinner for her.
07:44 Thanks so much.
07:45 Pango pup proved that she can find her own ants
07:48 at the relatively small rescue centre.
07:50 But to survive in the wild,
07:52 she's going to need to forage over a much wider area.
07:55 So this is like Pango pup kind of graduating to high school.
08:00 Here there's a lot of different landscapes.
08:02 There's grasslands, there's some forested areas,
08:04 there's some sandier areas.
08:05 So all of this will help Pango pup learn how to navigate different terrains,
08:09 how to find it, how to get out of the bush.
08:11 So all of this will help Pango pup learn how to navigate different terrains,
08:14 how to find different sorts of ants.
08:16 So hopefully she'll do really well out here.
08:18 Obviously our ultimate goal with Pango pup is for her to be released.
08:29 She's got to get a little bit fatter and a little bit bigger
08:31 so that she can kind of protect herself from predators
08:33 and stand up against other pangolins.
08:35 But she's a completely different animal now.
08:38 She's just grown in confidence.
08:40 She's cruising around the bush, no problems.
08:43 She used to come and ask us for a lift every few steps
08:45 and now she's like, "No, you know, I'm cool. I got this."
08:48 Pango pup will soon be moved to a secret release site,
08:52 safe from poachers.
08:54 I have no doubt in my mind that she's going to get back out there into the wild,
08:57 which is so important with pangolins because there's just so few of them out there.
09:01 Everyone that we can save and get back into the wild
09:03 is a massive boost for the population.
09:05 [Music]
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