Original subtitles

You can never underestimate the power of beliefs.

I come from Venda...

where societies are mythical.

In Tshivenda, we call pangolin "khwara."

Our elders believe that

a pangolin comes down from the sky

and vibrates its scales to trigger the thunder.

The pangolin brings us the rain.

When you see the pangolin,

it means you will be blessed...

...because a pangolin is a gift from God.

Before Pangolin,

I was sort of in that... that stage of my life

where I wanted something

a little bit more long-term, meaningful.

There's just something about pangolins.

They changed the way I saw the world.

But I've still never seen a pangolin in the wild.

Only ones that we've rescued from the illegal wildlife trade.

And that was how I met Gijima.

All eight species of these unique mammals

have been harvested relentlessly for traditional Chinese medicine.

The scales are used as an ingredient in up to 60 commercial remedies.

If the levels of illegal trade remain as they are now,

they'll be gone in two to three decades.

A sting operation is when we'll get intel

that there's a pangolin that the traffickers want to sell.

Ray lures them in, acting as a buyer.

All right, stand by.

Go, go, go, go!

Now!

Get up! Get up!

He said he's had it for a week.

- It's very light. - It's tiny.

Gijima was only a baby, so he was tiny.

It's an incredible thing

to see and experience just how innocent they are.

Their only defense is to roll up in a ball.

They can't run.

Okay. Okay.

They can't bite you.

Hey, buddy. You're good. You're good.

They are just so harmless.

We've made a contribution to assist an animal

that perhaps would've been killed.

So it's... it's actually a good... it's a good thing that we did. Ja.

I used to, after a sting operation,

be, like, super pumped up.

Man stuff.

Um, now I just feel traumatized.

I mean, I know the suffering that this animal is going through.

Some of them just never fully leave that darkness, and they die.

You never know what state

the pangolin's going to be in when it comes in.

Poaching is very traumatic

'cause they're plucked out of their little paradise...

- Not... Date, ja. - Date. Yeah.

...and then been through a very, very rough period

of bad handling and shouting and music and noise.

Gijima was very little.

It was pitiful

because he would've probably still been with his mother.

You have a volunteer assigned to each pangolin.

They're very sensitive animals because they're loners.

I remember what struck me was how terrified he was.

You are gonna be a handful, aren't you?

Come on.

You are gonna be a real handful.

Hmm?

Maybe he had been through particularly traumatic events.

This poor little animal is just in this absolute blind panic.

Come on.

It's okay.

It's okay, my buddy. It's okay.

Since 2007,

I think we've probably released close to 100 pangolins in all.

We used to keep them for a couple of days,

give them fluids, and then just try and get them out as quickly as possible.

No release process.

Which is so, so different to how we're doing it now

because we've learned such hard lessons.

Between the hospital and the release process,

we were losing pangolins.

The jump was too big.

There needs to be a place where you can become a pangolin again

and become a wild pangolin again.

And that was the dream of a pangolarium,

and we've been looking for the right place.

Lapalala is an exquisite reserve.

It's got mountains. It's got wetlands. It's got grassland.

It's got so many different types of ants.

It could be the perfect place for young pangolins to go.

We decided to take Gijima up...

and for Gareth to go up with him.

For me, there's definitely a fear of failure.

I'd never had to nurture something so vulnerable in my life before.

All right, hang on. The last bit.

I really just wanted to do the best job possible.

But with Gijima, that was never going to be easy.

Hey.

Okay. Okay.

Hmm?

Welcome to your new home. Hey?

Welcome to your new home.

Hey? Hey, my little man.

Hey? You ready to go for a walk? Hey?

Ready to go for a walk?

They've been through all this trauma,

so a lot of what we're doing

is the psychological rehabilitation.

Okay.

Gijima, he was around 3 kg.

He needs to be 6.5 kg before we let him go.

Are you ready to go?

That's a weight that has been determined

over years and years of trial and error

and learning the hard way that if a pangolin's too small,

it won't survive.

So the first time I took him out here at Lapalala, he just ran.

Where are you going?

And he's fast.

There's a fence there.

Careful, you're gonna walk into the fence. Oop.

I was full helicopter parent.

I wasn't letting him out of my sight.

Here's Gijima!

There goes Gijima.

Are you going for a swim? Yeah?

Careful.

Hey? Careful there.

His dominant instinct wasn't to settle, to forage.

I think that instinct to just get away kicked in.

He didn't interpret my presence as a very safe space.

He was just fully driven.

Not affectionate, not playful.

His dominant instinct was to escape.

He's a Temminck's pangolin, but he's not fully bipedal yet.

So when he walks,

he'll still support himself a lot with his arms.

Pangolins have been on planet Earth for 85 million years.

They evolved with the dinosaurs.

It walks on its hind legs with its two front legs like a T. rex,

just dotting along.

There's no other mammal that's covered in hard, overlapping scales,

so that on its own makes them absolutely unique.

It's an ancient creature that runs the risk of extinction.

A creature that is unicorn-type status.

Because that's what it is, it's so rare.

So effectively, pangolins can't open their mouth like we can.

They've got a small little hole where the tongue comes out.

Their food is literally ants and termites.

That's it.

Their hearing ability is very good.

Their eyesight is very poor.

Their scenting capacity, even better than a dog.

They don't have vocal cords.

They don't make a noise.

They're predominantly nocturnal.

Sleep out in burrows.

You wouldn't know if that thing's five meters from you.

You just don't see them.

They only have one pup per female per year.

And their parental care is extreme.

Moms look after their pups for six, seven months.

When they eventually leave the burrow,

they ride on mom's back, being taught how to feed on solid foods

and what to look for.

And then they go off on their own.

Living with a pangolin,

it's very quiet.

I redesigned my entire routine

to suit his schedule.

So a normal day would pretty much be, wake up 4 a.m.,

and then

admin, running the business.

And then, obviously, waiting to hear the scratching at the box.

Hello, my buddy.

Hello. Be a good boy.

Ooh. Come on then, eh?

Oh, shh. My buddy. Come on.

You can put a plate of ants in front of a pangolin, and it won't feed.

Oh, that's a big yawn, hey? Come on.

The only way we can get them to feed

is by putting them down and letting them forage.

Okay. Hey? Okay, here we go.

Here we go.

Here we go, hey? Here we go, my buddy.

There we go.

When you're looking for ants, you have to get to know ants.

Gijima took me into that world...

on the very, very surface of the Earth.

And beneath it.

They share this underworld kingdom.

It's a massive nest.

Caswell is an ant doctor.

- These are the savanna spiny ants. - Yeah.

He's so excited about the world of ants.

I've got a taste for ants.

Like pangolins.

So... So, myrmecology is the study of ants, in short.

I did not learn how the natural environment works

in the textbook.

As a Muvenda young, uh, boy,

I'd just go to the bush.

There were just stretches of land. There was so much life in them.

There were all these animals.

But in all these years of being out in the field,

I've never seen a pangolin.

The first time I saw a pangolin, I saw it with Gareth.

It was just amazing.

This mythical animal.

It's got this physical appearance of multiple animals combined.

It was just something out of this world.

In Lapalala right now, I've got a long-term study,

studying the response of ants to climate change.

You can see one of them there. The small ones.

Okay.

Ants are part of what we call social animals,

just like we are social too.

And they all come from one family.

The queen is this founding mother.

You're the mother, and it's your world.

And you've got these Terminator-like kids

that only take orders.

And everything that they do is just for the success of the colony.

All ants that you see out are females.

They're all sisters.

It looks like they talk to each other.

- It's grooming sometimes. - They'll groom each other?

Yeah, they'll groom.

You are mostly seeing the older ones

'cause the newborns and all the brothers are still in the nest.

So it seems like in a matured ant colony,

the older you get, the more risky job you do.

When his nose is on the ground, he's looking for food.

He can smell ants through a foot of hard, hard earth.

So this larvae is, like, what he's going for.

All those miniature pieces of rice.

Yeah. It's eggs.

Yeah.

He's feasting.

It's like pangolin ice cream.

The ants go into a total panic.

It must just be this giant dragon

coming to wipe you out.

The ants will try and rescue their babies.

So they'll pick them up,

and they'll start carrying them away from his attack

as quickly as possible.

And when the ants bite him on his tongue,

he pulls it between his claws to get them off.

And then sometimes, he'll almost wrap it in a knot.

I mean, he was eating.

Um, he was definitely eating.

But he still wants to run.

I felt under a lot of pressure because

there's just so much riding on him being a successful release.

We wanna establish this place as a sanctuary for pangolins.

If something goes wrong with him,

then in all likelihood, the project isn't gonna go ahead.

Where we walk, there is an electric fence around here.

The lowest strand is about 20 centimeters off the ground.

It's the perfect height that a pangolin, walking on its hind legs,

will walk into it, and it hits it in the soft underbelly.

Boom! That pulse can hit, and it's gonna curl up in a protective ball.

There it sits...

...until it's dead.

The death rate in this country by electrocution is probably

about six or seven orders of magnitude higher than the illegal trade.

Then, one day, I was walking and got distracted for a split second.

And I think he saw it as a gap.

He just made a turn for the fence.

So I dived backwards to push him away from the fence.

And the current went through me, and I did charge him.

Hey.

He just starts shaking like crazy.

It's okay, hey?

It's like this...

The problem is that he hadn't associated the charge with the fence.

He had associated the charge with me.

Hey. It's okay. Hey. It's me, my buddy.

It's me. Hey.

It's okay. Hey. It's me.

Hey.

I just had to give him space.

It felt horrible.

Come on, it's okay. Hey, my buddy. It's okay. It's me.

I just felt disappointed with myself.

My whole life, I've had a fear that I'm not enough.

School was difficult. I was hyperactive.

I could not sit still.

I was sort of a rebel in my youth.

I went to two, three different high schools,

and eventually, I dropped out.

For a good three years, I was earning a living playing poker.

Partying.

I loved it.

And then two of my best friends died in a car accident.

It just tore my heart apart.

I had become so disconnected.

I slowly started realizing

that I was just never going to be happy

unless I found something else.

All of my school holidays, I got sent up to Zimbabwe

to go play in the wild.

I kind of just remember this very strong sense of freedom

being out there.

This sense of stillness.

I wanted to be involved with wildlife,

but I was running a business in Joburg.

I couldn't be out in the bush all the time the way I wanted to be.

Ja.

So then I got in touch with Ray,

and he took me to the Joburg Wildlife Vet.

And I saw my first pangolin.

There was a before world and an after world.

I started walking them every single day.

They have such a softness about them.

I've been taught my entire life,

"No, you don't talk about your feelings."

But I think the difference between pangolins and people is,

it's far easier to be vulnerable around a pangolin.

They're not gonna judge that vulnerability.

They sort of see the real you.

This is you right now, right here, and that's it.

After the electric fence,

it's taken him a long time to forgive me.

You run around in the garden...

while I put my shoes on. Okay? Hey? Okay?

Don't go climbing over the fence or anything.

I'll be back in a jiffy.

Each pangolin is different like people are different.

Some pangolins just roll around being friends with everybody.

Some are very sensitive and highly strung, maybe.

He just couldn't settle.

In Zulu, "gijima" means "run."

If I'm constantly calling him "run," maybe he understands that.

"Kulula" means "easy" in Zulu.

And so I just started calling him Kulu.

That didn't work at all with him.

Kulu does whatever he wants to do.

Okay.

Do you wanna go down here, huh? Go down here?

Come here. Come on. Get down.

I sort of tried to set up boundaries for him.

There are certain blocks

which have pretty much been marked out by roads.

He doesn't like boundaries.

He's very crafty.

If I'm there, he definitely pauses.

And then there's that sort of mad dash

to try and get across the road, hoping that I don't see him.

Uh-uh. Uh-uh. Uh-uh.

Uh-uh.

Uh-uh.

Are you eating because you heard me coming?

Or are you just being a good boy?

He's figured out that so long as he's eating,

I don't pick him up.

So if he's eating, I don't pick him up.

So if he's running

and I stop and I go towards him to pick him up,

he'll start scratching, whether there's food there or not.

He's like a little kid.

You have to redirect his awareness.

Otherwise, he's just like, "Okay, cool, now I'm exploring."

Part of his rewilding,

he needs to investigate in burrows.

You've got porcupine, bushpig, warthogs making burrows.

Aardvarks, certainly.

And then pangolins modifying them.

Ow!

Sometimes, in the evening, he sneaks into burrows

because he obviously wants to sleep out.

What that means for me is I have to try to take him out.

Oh God.

You're hoping there isn't a warthog in there.

And then I'm always thinking of snakes coming out of there.

Spiders.

I need to know that

he's not just gonna come out of the burrow at 1 a.m.

and then make a mad dash for freedom.

Oh God.

Ow!

I've been stuck in a few burrows.

I have had to be pulled out of a few burrows, yes.

Okay, I'll walk you up.

- Wheelbarrow. - Okay, slowly, ja?

- You all right? - I just squashed my ball on this branch.

Oh my God.

It's cool that he's in there,

but that does mean, like, a sleepless night for me.

I slept next to him.

I put my feet in the entrance of the burrow

'cause if I fell asleep, I would feel him crawling over me.

Slowly, over time, I've learned to trust him.

Just the sense of freedom that I can give him out here.

I can leave him for an hour at a time,

and then to find him, I use the telemetry.

Every time you walk with Kulu, you see new things.

As pangolins forage, they will not disrupt the whole colony.

They will eat just enough.

For me, that is so smart.

You just see, like, the entire surface of the Earth is just moving,

and it's crawling the whole time.

It's quite wild.

This is all just one giant pugnacious nest.

The most aggressive, dominant ants, and scary too, is the pugnacious.

We know who's the biggest enemy of pugnacious ants.

It's the pangolin.

Pugnacious, they will eat anything.

They'll overwhelm certain insects.

Even some small mammals, like rats.

Some birds, small chicks that can't fly, they will be eaten as well.

Around this termite mound,

this is a huge hunting ground for the pugnacious ants.

When the pangolins go and eat termites...

ants like pugnacious will also benefit,

scavenging on the leftovers of the pangolin.

The snouted termite soldiers all stand by,

with their snouts pointed upwards.

And then, if a pugnacious comes in close proximity to them,

they'll spray out this toxic glue.

It completely deters the pugnacious.

And that gives the workers enough time to pull the larvae back into the nest...

and then quickly close up the tunnels.

He has this incredible drive to be free.

But we need to get to six and a half kg.

A pangolin of six and a half kg

is really strong,

and it can hold itself into a tight ball

and, therefore, protect itself against predators.

It's taken Kulu a long time

to feel secure in the environment.

I started seeing signs of him settling down and calming.

There was that definite shift in him.

He started trusting me.

Oh, there's the good stuff.

There we go. Oh, is that the goodness?

Pangolins are not great at regulating their body temperature.

There we go.

We were out, and I poured a little bit of water on him, trying to cool him down.

On the belly, there you go.

And he starts doing little 360s

and crawling around the tree like a maniac.

Hey, there we go.

What are you doing? Hey?

Is that fun, my boy, hey? Is that nice?

Hey? Nice and cool.

Sometimes, when they're playing, they'll wrap their tail around your arm.

That was the first time that Kulu actually really allowed me to lift him up,

and he was using my arm as a play tool.

To be held by the tail and rolled around, that's fun for him.

He just started opening up,

and a playful side started to emerge.

He went through this just horrific experience

at the hands of humans.

So much fun, hey?

More? You want more? You want more?

For him to then give me that level of trust

is incredibly validating.

You want more? Come on then. Come on, you.

He's learning how to protect himself through play.

Their core strength needs to be incredibly strong and developed.

He developed it, doing sit-ups and doing crunches

and doing pull-ups.

We've been here for six months.

Big boy.

We're very close to our freedom.

Come on. Come here. Can I have a nice yawn? Hey?

We know when they're ready for their release process

when they are displaying very relaxed behavior.

They're feeding nicely. They're consistently putting on weight.

Where we are now is about a 45-minute drive

from where he's going to be released.

First one down, my bud. First one down.

With a satellite tag,

I'll be able to see his location on my phone.

Every hour, I'll get a ping to say, "I'm here."

I'm sorry. I'm sorry, my bud.

But even with that, the stakes are very high.

We'd release a perfectly healthy pangolin,

and they would die overnight.

We've lost pangolin to honey badger,

lion, leopard, hyena, even elephant.

Every pangolin is gonna face his dangers,

but at some stage, Kulu needs to be wild.

Can I see a yawn now?

Hey? Are you tired, my buddy?

Hey?

Where we're releasing Kulu, it is pangolin paradise.

You've got an incredible amount

of ant and termite activity there.

What I have to do is completely reestablish him

so he knows where he is every second of the day.

He'll familiarize himself with the different smells in the area,

where the potential dangers are.

Hey, come on. Come here.

Come on. Okay, all right.

Are you raring to go?

There you go. Hey? You know where you are.

Over the course of the first three days,

he was moving three to four kilometers in a day.

It's a massive area.

Ja, he's motored.

He'll feed as quickly as possible...

and just cover as much distance as possible.

Where are we going? There's a leopard here.

Are you sure you wanna be up here? Huh?

It was all very frantic.

Stay in the shade.

I mean, he needs to at least

spend a week or two in an area

and then explore, but, you know,

not just sort of day after day after day after day, just running.

There's only so much pressure I can put on him to eat.

Oh, that is pretty, huh?

Come on.

Come on, my boy. We still need to eat, bud.

There we go, hey? There we go, my boy.

Stop.

I heard something bugger off there.

Ja, there's monsters in the bushes here.

This little flay area is just leopard paradise.

At night, the wild is a very different place.

Lions become a very different animal after dark.

So do leopard.

Hearing a leopard...

...hyenas walking around.

That's a very definitive warning.

He's freaking out.

Okay, my boy. I got you.

I got you, my buddy. I got you.

Okay, here, boy.

He's burning a lot of energy.

This evening, he was, I think, the lowest he's been for over a week,

so it's... it's a noticeable weight drop.

And the potential is is then we start going backwards.

He's used more energy than he's been able to take in.

That makes sense. Remember what he was like.

He used to run, and then he slowly, over time, settled down.

- That's what you're waiting for him to do. - I want him to do it immediately.

- Just waiting for him to settle down.

No, I want him to do it now.

I think when rational advice has failed,

the only advice is to trust your own instinct.

And also to trust the pangolin.

'Cause the pangolin has got such strong instincts.

Rule number one is don't lose the pangolin.

I was trying to give him a little bit more space.

Just to try and get him to calm down.

But forgetting the telemetry, it's just such a stupid mistake.

If he gets into a certain area

and his tags come off, I might never find him again.

Then there's the electric fence.

That fence is just certain death.

And he can do a kilometer in an hour.

You guys go back to the car.

It's making me anxious.

Like, now.

You feel so responsible.

You feel responsible to the team of people that are behind you,

but most of all, you feel responsible to that animal.

Because the satellite tag is not checking in,

we can't pinpoint him down to...

exactly where he is so that we can actually find him.

You know, we walked around looking for him, but...

I mean, it's like trying to find a ghost.

Oh, he's just clocked in.

Okay, let's go. Uh, he's just gone further north,

and he's on that side of the road. Come on, let's go.

He's now been gone for two and a half hours.

We found him just under a tree,

eating termites.

And I think it was in that moment,

it was kind of like, "He's got this."

He doesn't need me being this helicopter parent,

watching over him.

At the thornbush there. No.

Hmm.

You can't control everything, and my sort of knee-jerk is, "Yes, I can."

But I think, yeah, there is that reality that, "No, I can't."

Hello, my champ.

Hello, my champ. Hello.

What's up? Come on.

There's been less than a handful of times where he's actually come to me.

Aw. Aw.

My boy. Hey.

Hello.

Oh my goodness.

Hey.

Oh my goodness, my boy.

Are you cleaning me?

Do I need a clean? Hey?

He sort of reassured me and said,

"Everything's gonna be fine."

Hey?

That is crazy.

Hey? Thank you for that, my boy. Hey?

Thank you, my buddy.

Ja, I don't know.

It sort of felt like he was telling me.

When the universe was created...

the healers and animals were connected.

The pangolin holds a special place.

As a Venda child, you must spend

the first three months of life inside your home.

Before you go out, you must be vaccinated to keep you safe.

The healer takes the scale of a pangolin

and soaks it in water.

We will splash that water upon you,

like rain.

This will instill you with humility and calm...

so that when the pangolin calls the thunder,

you will not be afraid.

It's the last time, bud.

Hey? It's your last time.

Hey, last time. Last time, my boy. Hey?

On the one hand, I just want him to be free so badly.

Okay.

But then, the one thing that I thought of was, like,

"What am I gonna do without him?"

I mean, he lives with me.

I sleep five meters away from him.

I'm in his presence 24/7, and I have been for six months, so...

What is it gonna feel like being away from that?

Okay, my buddy, we're here. Hey, we're here.

We're here, my champ.

Gonna eat lots. Hey?

Oh, so hungry, hey? Gonna eat lots for me, my buddy. Hey.

My letting go of him is gonna be incredibly gradual.

I mean, he's a hand-reared pangolin.

Oh, there we go. Hey? That's a good boy.

He's spent more of his life with me

than he has in the wild.

Is he gonna feel abandoned?

Is it gonna stress him out to the point

where his immune system starts getting compromised,

he gets covered in ticks,

he stops feeding, he starts running at night?

Hey, where are you going?

Um, there's a lot that can go wrong.

Then there's the electric fence.

Just this sort of unavoidable dragon.

Hey, buddy. Is this your home?

Is this your home, my champ?

It's an amazing day. He's eaten heaps, and he's still eating,

which is just unbelievable.

He's been incredibly relaxed.

He hasn't run.

He's happy. I can... I can feel that he's happy.

Are you happy?

I'm ecstatic.

When you're working closely with animals,

it gets very, very difficult to break that bond.

And he's gonna have to go through that.

And that's gonna be... bloody hard.

Hey.

And we're trying to save a species.

A species that could go extinct in our lifetime.

You've had the privilege of working with a ghost, working with a unicorn.

And when you think about that, it weighs heavy on you.

Ja. He knows.

I'll just keep an eye on him, for as long as he allows me.

We monitor these pangolins post-release up to 12 months.

And we need feedback almost on a daily basis.

With the camera trap,

I can give him space but still spy on him.

You can see in this burrow,

he actually has an upstairs bedroom.

When he goes in now, you can actually see him go upstairs into the burrow.

We've seen, like, quite a few different housemates.

I mean, there's just this incredible world happening around him.

He's invincible.

That's what that pangolin feels now.

But it's tough out there, and it's dangerous.

And he'll learn he's not invincible.

In Tshivenda, a pangolin is a mystical creature.

It is a blessing to see one.

But if one drop of a pangolin's blood touches the ground,

it will bring forth natural disasters.

He'd been free for eight weeks when I had to go to Joburg for work.

But while I was there, I got a call from the reserve,

saying that he wasn't coming out of his burrow.

All the scenarios were running through my mind.

I felt like there was something wrong with him.

My main concern was that

something like a spotted hyena had gotten hold of him.

It didn't occur to me that his burrow could have collapsed

until it was day six.

That morning, I was just getting more and more concerned

and, like, building up into quite a state.

- Hey, Nicci. - Morning, Gareth.

Something's not right.

He hasn't actually been seen for six days.

So, I have thought of every eventuality.

God, I don't know what-- what to even think, um...

I don't know what to say about that

except just get there with a spade.

Yeah, okay.

So I get there yesterday.

Set up the camera trap.

It's all right, my boy. It's just me.

Start digging.

So I'm just, like, "Oh Jesus Christ, I'm digging up a body."

I feel like I've got, like, emotionally, just nothing left.

Ja, I'd been digging for like, for two hours.

My back's, like, giving in.

Eventually, I realized I needed help,

so I called in the anti-poaching unit.

We were, like, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig.

It took us, like, four and a half, five hours.

We dug a swimming pool.

Eventually, we get to this hollow point.

And at that point, I was convinced

the chances are that he's not alive.

I'm digging up his body.

Okay, guys, just kill the lights.

Hey, are you okay? Are you okay, my boy?

Hey? Are you okay?

And he looks at me.

Are you all right, my buddy? Hey?

I just fall over. I was like, "Oh my God, he's alive."

Are you okay, my boy? Hey? Are you all right?

Hey? Are you okay? Are you hurt?

Are you hurt?

Hey? Are you all right?

Hey? Are you okay?

Hey? What are you doing in here?

Check him out. Look at him.

He's, like, shell-shocked of what's been going on

and the noise around him and everything like that.

Okay, I think he's a little bit weak, so...

Hey, it's all right. I've got you, my boy. You're okay. You're okay, my boy.

Hey, you're okay. You're okay, my buddy.

Hey, are you okay? Hey? Are you all right?

Are you sleeping? Hey?

Are you okay, my buddy?

Look at me. Are you okay, my boy? Hey?

Hey, look at you. Hey, it's me.

It's me, my buddy. It's me.

Hey? Are you all right? Hey?

You're okay, my boy. What are you doing to me?

Hey, come on. Come on.

Here you go, let's go up. Come here. Hey, it's all right, come here.

Are you gonna walk for me?

Hey? Can you walk?

I wanna see, like, okay, is he weak?

And he slowly starts walking.

He finds a nest of ants, and he just climbs in.

Just starts to chow like crazy.

The little dude was starving.

What an ordeal.

It never occurred to me that him being trapped in a burrow

would be something I would have to worry about.

All right, big girl. Just relax.

Have you seen any interactions

between him and some of the big mammals?

So, the interesting thing is he'll actually follow them around.

- Because he'll roll in their dung. - Oh yes.

And he'll cover himself.

If you're a lion, and you're smelling rhino shit,

you don't think that it's something that you're gonna hunt.

Ja. There's so much mimicking in most animals.

Hey, my buddy.

Are we gonna do this, and I'll leave you alone?

Come on. Come. Come.

Come. Come.

Come here. Come on. Let's be quick. Come on. We'll be quick. Hello.

Come on. I know you're a free pangolin. You don't wanna be handled. Hey?

Pull it up this way. There we go.

Hold still. There we go.

Hey. You're very calm in there. Hey?

Have you been good?

Have you been a good boy? How's this tummy? That's good.

Huh?

Hah. Completely unfazed.

You see how slowly he's moving, eh?

Not that...

Ja.

Looks like he's heading west into the valley.

As a human being,

it's your role to protect the animals around you.

As scientists, we're trying to now link the science

and what people understood.

You've got this magical animal

that can make it rain.

Everyone wants the rain.

The myth that protects,

that has let humans and the environment live in harmony.

Those stories, they were passed through generations,

but we're raising a group of people now that need to be told things as they are.

They are not interested in what people used to believe.

Whether science combined with the traditional ways of doing things,

or science comes alone,

at the center of everything

is that we need to protect the environment.

What has our kind done to the Kulu kind?

I think that if such a special creature like a pangolin

is lost,

it symbolizes the way we treat everything.

It has been a hell of a thing,

like a long, long journey.

He's just a completely different animal.

He's so relaxed.

It just feels like he can do things

when he wants to, on his terms,

without any sort of pressure.

He's carried on gaining weight.

He's now mapped out this entire area.

And he's moved into this dense, thick riverine territory.

It's like he has found the wildest pocket of wilderness,

and that's where he's staying.

He might be looking for a female.

I mean, the fact that he's now going around

and just scent-marking everything

is a pretty good indication that he's ready.

And we know there are other pangolins in the area.

He's now been in the wild

for longer than he's been in captivity.

It almost seems like a debt was paid at that point.

The last two times that I've gone out to go check on him,

he's tried to hide from me.

By lying flat,

he's trying to blend in with his surroundings.

That feels like the last step in his rewilding process.

I mean, there's got to be a point where you let go.

In a way, we maybe should never have seen him in the first place.

I mean, if he's just never seen again,

that means he's out there doing his thing.