you can sugarcoat it you can paint their tank but they're literally locked up
i'm kp a marine biologist and you're watching another currently
today we're taking a look at a video and even furthermore a concept suggesting that we can
replace animals in zoos and aquariums with robots so let's dive in and see what we think
this might look like a real dolphin but it's a robot nobody believed it was a robot everybody
believed it was real it's an impressive feat of engineering but it's a much bigger deal than that
this robot could save the marine park industry and free the 3 000 dolphins whales and porpoises that
are basically locked up in no way shape or form will the introduction of these robotic animals
free whales dolphins or porpoises currently under human care these animals have been deemed
non-releasable by government agencies agencies like the usda or noaa in the u.s or the dfo in
canada and i think a common misconception is that zoos and aquariums are making the decisions on
whether or not to release animals into the wild zoos and aquariums can make recommendations but
in the end the government makes all of these decisions okay now that we've cleared that up
you can sugarcoat it you can paint their tank but they're literally locked up
okay stop locked up is an absolute false analogy is a catchphrase designed to be
impactful and make you feel a certain way but it is not grounded in fact
animals in facilities have dedicated staff that give them around-the-clock care
and that's not to say that animals under human care don't have specific challenges that we
as people need to strive to meet they're just different challenges than those out in the ocean
but all of the sea otters that you see in any of my videos here on youtube
over on tick-tock instagram posts all of those animals were orphaned as pups
and rescued rehabilitated and deemed non-releasable by the government most
of them were abandoned by their mothers before they were even old enough to know how to swim
and if zoos and aquariums didn't exist and didn't have live animals then all of these
sea otters would have been euthanized and in these cases i believe these animals lead
full and happy lives and euthanasia is not in their best interest
that's the complicated problem with zoos and marine parks
on one hand we lock up wild animals for our own entertainments on the other they provide the only
venue for everyone to see and interact with the natural world while also contributing millions
to conservation and rehabilitation efforts okay so i really do appreciate their willingness to admit
and talk about the positives of zoos and aquariums because a lot of times i find
that videos paint this is a very black and white issue and i don't believe that it is
if you follow me on tick tock or instagram or if you've watched any of my videos even attended
my live streams over on twitch you will know that while i do support zoos and aquariums by and large
i do understand that there are problems and limitations to what zoos and aquariums are
doing right now and there are aspects of zoos and aquariums that absolutely
need improvement white tigers i i definitely do recommend like if you're gonna go to a facility
and you're like oh they have white tigers look a little bit closer as to why they have white tigers
because white tigers are just like inbred tigers and it's pretty horrible so for me the truth is in
between the black and white somewhere in the gray in between but what if this robot could keep the
upside and eliminate the downside it's easy to kind of demonize the marine park industry as a
whole but we don't think that's the answer we just want to transition them to the future in a much
more sustainable way this is just my work a show about surprising solutions to our biggest problems
is it our biggest problem back here this is actually the original mold from free
willy come on willie i know you can do a boy the colonel not the example you think that it is it
really did start with free willy 20 years ago walt and roger holtzberg built the first free
swimming animatronic no big deal the mechanical challenge was hard enough but the key to making
it all work was to create something that felt real you don't necessarily think about it but there's
no blueprint for creating a dolphin so we study tons and tons and tons of footage looking actually
at motion profiles which ultimately relate to accelerations and torques inside they're
all machines they're all joints and servos and microprocessors and stuff but what makes a dolphin
or an orca or a shark or a beluga distinctive is actually the art and knowledge that we bring to it
see i think what makes those animals amazing is the fact that they are living breathing
thinking animals and i think that if i went to some kind of exhibition like this i'd come away
with a really strong appreciation for the animatronics the engineers the technology
but i just don't know that i'd come away with an appreciation for the animals that it represents
and with a strong connection to try to drive conservation i don't think
that seeing a robotic sea otter would be the same as watching katmai or joey play
maybe i'm wrong though i don't know let me know in the comments a lot of interesting
things happened when we piloted these attractions all of the fish in the entire aquarium believed
the dolphin was real the sharks avoided it the turtles were terrified of it the small fish i
also don't know that this means that they thought it was real they thought it was scary certainly
schooled underneath it but the dolphins can echolocate so they certainly could tell
there were servos and plastic in this thing in the tank those early successes
led them to the most important question if the robot could fool the animals in the tank
could it fool us okay so this is what i don't understand is the idea that we're not gonna tell
the people that the animals are actually robots like are we advertising them as live animals
because i don't see any way that they would lie to the community about what was going on here
and i just am not sure that people would go to see this over the opportunity to see
live animals there are only a handful of marine parks left in the u.s and attendance has steadily
declined but that perception shift hasn't been the case everywhere in china business is booming
okay here they're they're showing uh footage of what are clearly not north american zoos and
aquariums i cannot speak for what is happening in other countries i don't know their practices i can
tell you that in north america the animals receive exceptional care and there are studies that back
this up again those links in the descriptions below but i'm just not really willing to comment
on practices that are happening in other countries since i simply don't know enough about that
but it has created the perfect opportunity for edge innovations to show there's a new
way forward about a year and a half ago out of the blue i get an email from a producer working
on a large oceanarium initiative in mainland china and they've just done the math on what it's going
to take to acquire a pretty large number of large marine animals and somebody said boy i wonder if
you could do this animatronically we currently are finalizing contract for a installation in a major
chinese coastal city i'll be very interested in seeing how this goes will this work replace
a real dolphin with a robot dolphin we have seen dolphins and orcas doing acrobatics in arenas for
50 years we want to create a whole new set of experiences that this technology allows
there are some limitations to the current iteration okay see so to me these up close
in water interactions they don't work if you know that it's a robot controlled by a middle-aged man
behind a curtain i could see this maybe working if we're looking at a big open kelp exhibit with
sea turtles and fish and suddenly a few dolphins swim by but for an interactive in-person encounter
with someone this age they'll know that this interaction is staged the fun and
these types of encounters and interactions in my experience is the unpredictability of them
animals don't always do what you want they have their own personalities their own desires
at times they're not interested in the food that you have they have better things to do
and then you're left explaining to the guests why
the dolphin is playing with something over there rather than coming over and hanging out with you
there's no sound coming out of your mouth sir it sounds like a squeaky no or you might have an
animal that forms a particular connection to a person in the encounter group
and i just don't see how you can replicate that with animatronics it's attached to a wire for now
and is controlled mostly by an operator it's also expensive but the numbers pay off over time while
this dolphin costs between three and five million to make it's far more economical in the long run
as it turns out the cost of entry of animatronic animals is significantly more than buying their
live counterparts but over a 10-year lifespan it saves many many tens of millions of dollars okay i
can believe that because the animals are expensive to house but i'd like to see the numbers here sure
ideally all you have to do is plug it in at night it recharges uh and is ready to go in the morning
but anyone who has owned any piece of technology knows this isn't true the average lifespan of an
iphone is three years but most people see a decline in performance after two and how
often do you service your car i mean in 10 years it's eons when it comes to technology like this
what may be the most powerful feature of the robots is also impossible to measure
and that's the opportunity to actually interact with a wild animal
experiential but it's not a wild animal that you create like del the dolphin is the deepest
and most effective type of education with our animatronic creatures they've bonded in a way
that that kid is never going to forget and our hope is that that love and that feeling is going
to make her want to protect those animals when she grows up we actually want to expand
again there are scientific studies that show that people that interact with animals at zoos
and aquariums come away with a better knowledge of those animals and a desire to help conserve a
species one survey found that 86 of participants understanding of marine mammal conservation
changed after watching a live stream of a baby sea otter for a year
but i just don't see that happening with robotic dolphins and maybe these kids will believe
that the dolphins are real but at some point they'll realize the truth and will they still
care about dolphins i have lots of doubts i feel like the age range at which this would work is
very limited anyone over the age of 12 would definitely know that they are not interacting
with a living creature we live on a fragile planet and we want to use that experience of recreating
the past oceans to let people be entertained and enjoy but to point out the fact that nothing's
given these things are fragile they're all interrelated and we got to take care of the oceans
okay i really like a lot of what they have to say and i'm grateful that they appreciate the role
that zoos and aquariums play in conservation and public outreach but one thing that they
don't mention is that they would lose both the research and the ability to rehabilitate animals
if this model moved forward and i don't think that enough zoos and aquariums are talking about this
seaworld should absolutely be singing from the mountaintops about the work that they do
in research and rehabilitation they rescue and release thousands of animals every year
and they are one of the biggest contributors to the understanding of our oceans a vast majority
of that research is not possible in the ocean and it is definitely not possible with animatronics
there are things you cannot mimic you cannot mimic perfectly dolphin skin you cannot
mimic perfectly the airflow through a dolphin's lungs you cannot mimic perfectly echolocation
and that's because animals unlike robots are not perfect it's perfect it's perfect in every
way i've talked about some of the research that i've personally participated in under human care
you can find a little bit more about that up here so this is part of a research project that
i actually helped out with working with our dolphins who were trained to allow us to put
tags on them so that they could actually sort of hone those tags that's what you lose if you
replace animals with animatronics you lose the ability to do this vital research and you lose
the ability to do rescue programs because you have nowhere to put animals that cannot be released
and i believe you lose at least some of the educational value and the drive for conservation
maybe i'm wrong and it'll be interesting to see if something like this ever actually does come
to fruition let me know what you think down in the comments below and i'll catch you next time cheers
you