Tony Cholerton created Robovacc to inoculate a timid tiger at London zoo – but says it could administer jabs to badgers
It began with the tiger who wouldn’t come to tea. Cinta was so shy that she refused to feed when keepers at London zoo were around, and staff wondered how they would ever administer the young animal’s vaccinations without traumatising her.
So Tony Cholerton, a zookeeper who had been a motorcycle engineer for many years, invented Robovacc – a machine to quickly administer vital jabs without the presence of people.
The result, a clever contraption he controlled from an adjacent room with a handset taken from remote-control toy aeroplanes, successfully administered vaccinations to Cinta in a feeding area. The tiger sat up briefly, mid-meal, as the needle penetrated her rear end, then calmly continued eating.
Cholerton, who worked at London zoo for 30 years before retiring in late 2025, now hopes a fully developed automatic version of his invention could solve seemingly intractable wildlife challenges – such as the role of badgers in spreading bovine TB to cattle.
