The Critter Fixers Meet Baby Animals in Disney's Animal Kingdom | ourHOME | National Geographic
[Music] I'm Dr. Rard Hodes and I'm Dr. Terence Ferguson, but you may know us better as the Creative Fixers. Our job has us taking care of all kinds of animals, but this Earth Month, we're traveling to Disney Animal Kingdom to meet some adorable additions and talk to folks there about some of the work they're doing to help preserve, protect, and restore the planet we call [Music] home.
How's it going, friends? Welcome! Hello, how are you? I'm doing well, how are you guys? We're so happy to have you guys here at Disney's Animal Kingdom theme park today. You guys might have heard we have some new arrivals we're ready to show you guys. Kora and all of the other awesome animals—I've heard so much about this baby elephant, I can't wait!
We're very excited to see some of our new bundles of joy and learn a little bit about the conservation efforts that are tied to some of these new baby animals. All right, sounds good, sounds good! Let's go, let's get this started! Let's do it!
A lot of our animals here are trained to participate in their own medical care. Perry the porcupine is a great example of that. I believe you also get to see Kora, our baby elephant. Her mom was pregnant for 639 days!
Whew, yeah, and then her labor was 12 minutes. So, there's a payoff! Any of the food that we don't think is up to the quality standards for animals, as well as any leftovers, goes into our food waste and it gets composted. We grow a lot of plants just so that we can feed them to the animals. We can put that compost back in there and help those plants grow back even healthier. It's a lot about sustainability.
We want to make sure that we're able to keep feeding these animals well for as long as we can. Some of the work that our team is doing here is also helping animals in the wild. For example, the Gorilla Biscuits—that's a huge kind of conservation tie that Disney has. The nutrition center actually helped develop these biscuits for a partner that we have in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is really [Music] special.
Bridget is one of the animal keepers on our elephant team. She's responsible for the daily care of these incredible creatures that we're going to be seeing. We hear there's a baby elephant running around; she's excited to see you guys too! You know not many elephants where we're from [Music]!
Perfect, right there, right there! Oh, look, look! There she is, baby elephant, wow! So with her age, the only thing that you're monitoring now would be weight—weight gain—and obviously her activity levels. She's gaining about 20 lbs a week, so we want to make sure she's happy and healthy. The weight is the most important, but we also want to make sure that she's socializing with everybody. She's playing; she's using her trunk just like she is right now!
Look cute when she came out, and I saw her run around; it's like wow! We actually here at Disney's Animal Kingdom have one of the bigger herds in the country, which is really exciting for us because we get to watch the three generations of our elephants grow up. We're adding to what is called the species survival plan, adding new baby elephants. We're basically helping the species survival plan thrive.
It's really special because our guests are able to come and see these animals, and they're getting to see really these ambassadors for their species in the wild. Hopefully, our guests go home feeling inspired to protect wildlife for them, but also learn more about the incredible species that we have here too.
Thank you guys so much for visiting us today and getting to visit some of our newest bundles of joy here at the park! We got to see Elijah the oopy, Rosa, and Catalina our cotton-top tamarin, and of course, our baby elephant Kora.
Mhm, I mean those are the cutest babies ever! Now what do you say we go ride some rides? I think that sounds like a plan! Sounds good!