Zoo Animal Care: Keepers, Robot Penguins and ABB

Zoo animal care has always depended on keepers who haul buckets of food and get to know each animal over years. Machines came into the job slowly, first as feeding puzzles and lately as robots that swim next to real penguins. This post covers how keepers worked before automation, how enrichment devices changed the job from the 1970s, and what robots do in zoos and aquariums now, from a robotic whale shark in Shenzhen to remote controlled penguins in Japan. It ends with where ABB robots could help behind the scenes and what limits all of this.

A keeper feeding Humboldt penguins from a bucket at Birdworld in Farnham, England, 2011. Photo: Chris Parfitt / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

How keepers fed, cleaned and watched by hand

For most of the twentieth century a zoo ran on the keepers' daily rounds. They cut and weighed food in the zoo kitchen, carried it to each enclosure, hosed down floors and checked every animal for signs of illness. Directors often did the hands on work too: an old photograph from Seattle shows Gus Knudson, director of Woodland Park Zoo around 1920, holding a monkey himself. How well an animal was cared for depended on what its keeper noticed and remembered, and the records lived on paper.

Gus Knudson, director of Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, with a monkey around 1920. Photo: Seattle Municipal Archives / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

The first machines in animal care were built to keep animals busy. In the late 1970s Hal Markowitz, Director of Zoological Research at the Portland Zoo in Oregon, set up what he called behavioral engineering, in which animals worked devices to earn their food. A troop of mandrills had a reaction time game. The adult male earned all of his food pieces through it, and visitors could test their own speed against his. Markowitz later carried the work on in San Francisco, and many people call him the father of environmental enrichment.

An Asian elephant at the Denver Zoo playing with a ball given as environmental enrichment, 2006. Photo: Ginkgo100 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Enrichment is now normal zoo practice. Balls, puzzle feeders, scattered food and timed devices make animals search for their meals the way they would in the wild. Markowitz's last book, Enriching Animal Lives, came out shortly before his death in 2012 and describes a range of automated enrichment devices. Cleaning has stayed far more manual. In large aquariums divers still climb into the tanks and scrub the acrylic by hand while visitors watch from the other side of the glass.

A scuba diver cleaning the glass of a tank at the Georgia Aquarium while a child watches, 2009. Photo: istolethetv / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Robot penguins and a robot whale shark

The newest robots in zoos look like animals. On 4 September 2026 Jiji Press reported that two robotic penguins, one modelled on a rockhopper and one on a gentoo, are swimming among live penguins at Adventure World in Shirahama, Wakayama, the only facility in the world that keeps ten penguin species. One visitor said they thought it was real. The robots come from a group led by Ikuma Okada inside the park's operator, set up in 2019 to build robotic animals so that people who cannot visit can still feel close to them.

Emperor penguins in their enclosure at Adventure World in Shirahama, Wakayama, where robot penguins now swim with live birds. Photo: 名古屋太郎 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

The penguins are covered in wetsuit material, with toothpicks used to press feather patterns into it, and staff steer them by remote control. Okada wants to make them more waterproof and able to move on their own for longer. Robotic animals can also backfire. When Xiaomeisha Sea World in Shenzhen reopened in October 2024, about 100,000 people came in the first week, and visitors soon found out that its whale shark was a robot. Photos taken through the glass showed gaps in its body, and complaints filled social media. The aquarium said the machine cost millions of yuan and was built because the law bans trade in whale sharks.

An African penguin at Adventure World in Shirahama, 2013. Photo: harum.koh / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

ABB has no zoo robots that we know of, but some zoo jobs resemble work its robots already do in factories and labs. Zoo kitchens portion large amounts of produce, fish and meat every day. A GoFa CRB 15000 cobot could weigh and portion diets beside the keepers, and Flexley Mover AMRs could carry crates of feed from the kitchen to the enclosures, much as they carry parts around a plant. Both ideas are possibilities, and you can see the factory versions in our list of ABB robot use cases.

An ABB GoFa CRB 15000 cobot at a work table, the kind of arm that could portion food beside keepers. Photo: ABB

Where animal care robots go next

Robotic animals will probably spread as laws and public opinion turn against keeping some species in tanks, especially whales and dolphins. Edge Innovations, a special effects company, built a robotic dolphin in 2020 with that market in mind. It has no cameras or sensors of its own, so an operator nearby steers it in real time. Research groups such as the TalTech Centre for Biorobotics in Tallinn build robotic fish for science, and some of what those labs learn may reach exhibit robots. Every one of these machines still needs staff to drive it, charge it and fix it.

A panorama of the TalTech Centre for Biorobotics in Tallinn, where robotic fish are developed and tested in tanks, 2018. Photo: Lauri Veerde / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

At home the same ideas are already on sale as automatic pet feeders, water fountains and self cleaning litter boxes. They take over routine chores and leave the owner to notice when the cat is off its food. In zoos, the jobs most likely to be automated next are the repetitive ones, such as moving feed and washing bowls. Any robot near an enclosure has to cope with water, dirt and curious animals, so a cell like that is usually laid out and tested first in RobotStudio before anything is installed.

An ABB Flexley Mover P603 carrying crates, the kind of load a zoo kitchen moves every day. Photo: ABB

Cost is a real limit, because many zoos run on tight budgets, and a robot that needs a specialist to maintain it may not pay off. Animal welfare is the other test. A machine that portions food or carries crates gives keepers more time to watch the animals. A robotic animal shown without a clear label risks the kind of backlash Xiaomeisha faced. Mobile lab robots such as ABB's mobile YuMi concept, designed for hospital labs, suggest that some veterinary lab testing could one day be automated as well.

ABB's mobile YuMi concept, a dual arm robot on a wheeled base, in a hospital lab corridor. Photo: ABB

Innovation

AI solutions for effortless ABB robot control.

Automation

Robotics

ceojohntran@chatwithrobot.net

+84905311611

© 2025. All rights reserved.

qtran1215@gmail.com