Baby Anteater Would Much Rather Nap Than Forage For Ants

The Dodo

Baby anteater learns how to eat ants with the help of his favorite teddy bear ❤️

Transcript

00:00 Goliath was found at the side of the road.

00:03 Absolutely adorable, two months old.

00:05 Sadly, his mother was hit by a car.

00:08 We went and picked him up to rehabilitate Goliath.

00:11 He was very shy in the beginning.

00:15 Initially, when we were walking him through the jungle,

00:18 in between his milk feeds, he would just cling on to us.

00:21 He wouldn't want to come off at all.

00:23 And then gradually, over time, he grew the confidence to come off us.

00:29 [Music]

00:34 We were feeding him on goat's milk.

00:36 He was really crazy about the milk.

00:39 We were taking him out to try and encourage him to discover the world of ants and termites.

00:47 He was not interested at all.

00:49 He was actually quite scared of termites and ants.

00:52 When they crawled on him, he would try and brush them off.

00:56 We would have to try and act like his mother and forage ourselves

00:59 in order to encourage him to get interested in what he should be.

01:04 Eventually, he got the hang of it and he started foraging himself.

01:08 He was still a baby and he still needed that physical contact.

01:17 So we tried to encourage him to cling on to a stuffed toy in order to protect ourselves,

01:23 but also to make it a bit more natural for him in his rehabilitation.

01:27 We always kept the milk in his life, even though he wasn't reliant on it.

01:34 It was a good way to bring him home at night.

01:36 We'd have these zoomies, his ninja moves, where he would go into this really playful mood

01:50 and you could really see his personality come shining through.

01:53 It was really sweet.

01:54 It was an amazing transformation for him to be so scared and so clingy

02:03 to actually developing this goofy personality where he'd feel comfortable enough

02:08 to play in the jungle and lie and sunbathe and go to sleep in his natural surroundings.

02:15 We decided to take that next step in his rehabilitation

02:19 because we were struggling to keep up with him in the forest.

02:22 We travelled through the night

02:28 to this beautiful reserve.

02:34 He was very scared at first because it's a completely new environment for him,

02:38 but he soon very quickly settled in.

02:44 It took just a few hours for him to realise that he was in ant and termite heaven.

02:50 You can only compare it to sending your kids off to school.

02:55 It's an incredibly bittersweet moment to see them go off.

02:59 He just knew what to do.

03:04 It was an incredibly rewarding thing to see him develop into the ant he is now.

03:11 [Music]

03:13 [Music]

03:15 [Music]

03:17 (upbeat music)

03:19 (water bubbling)

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