PBS - Operation Wild (2015) Part 2

Filmed over 18 months, Operation Wild follows vet teams around the world as they undertake groundbreaking operations to try and save animals’ lives.

We find out how pioneering human medicine is transforming the way we can look after animals in some of the most remote places on earth. But it takes more than just high tech medicine to treat the biggest animals on the planet — these are dramatic stories of ingenuity, invention and dedication.

Part 2

In Episode 2, we join a team in South Africa that is trying to help a rhino who was attacked by poachers for her horn. Thandi was nursed back to health by rhino vet Dr Will Fowlds, and he’s joined by a human plastic surgeon who is planning to heal the wound on her face with a world first — a rhino skin graft.

Deep in Borneo rainforest, Dr. Birute Galdikass looks after ill and injured orangutans before releasing them into the wild. Orangutan Rosemary has been brought back from the rainforest with her 7-year-old daughter Rodney, because her cataracts make her virtually blind. They will only be released if specialist microsurgery helps Rosemary see again.

In Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, we find out how human heart technology is being used to help our closest animal relatives — chimpanzees — who, like us, suffer from heart disease.

In Pretoria, we meet a Cape fur seal suffering from a mystery illness. The vets use high tech diagnostic machines usually only found in our hospitals to find out what is wrong with her. A CT scan reveals a mass has formed in her head — and it’ll be an anxious wait for her keeper to find out if it's a tumor.

A giraffe has caught his leg in a snare and without treatment will die — so vet Derek Venter prepares to catch and save him. But giraffe are one of the hardest animals to anaesthetize because of their unique anatomy and the strength of the drugs needed to sedate them. The team has just three minutes to catch the giraffe before the effects of the dart kick in and he stops breathing.

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