The Crawler Zoo — a live menagerie of web crawlers

The Crawler Zoo

2 min read Original article ↗

Vol. I · Wed, 14 Oct 2026Open 24 hours · Feeding: continuous · Please do not tap the glassPatrons☕ Keepers' coffee

Gate count · since midnight · live

916

automata have let themselves in today. Admission was free. Nobody bought a ticket.

Respected robots.txt221

Read it, broke it anyway647

Ignored it entirely23

No robots.txt record yet25

Caught in the trap1

New species recorded1

00h06h12h18hArrivals by hour

Nowarriving

The Labyrinth · liveFollow a bot through the endless mazeWatch which doors they open, room by room. The deepest has gone 221,000 levels down.Follow a bot →Feeding timeThe vending machine is restocked: A Very Large JSON and eleven more snacks. Feed the bots →

Plan of the Grounds

Enclosures surveyed from today's traffic. Not to scale. Select one to meet its residents.

Plate CCLXXXVII.Bot of the Day14 October 2026

Fig. 10xBABC2D04

Adult specimen, drawn from the hash of its user-agent token. It will look exactly like this every time it visits.

Common name

Applebot

Pomum cupertinum

Kingdom
Automata
Phylum
HTTP
Order
Crawlers
Family
Search Engines
Species
Applebot

Temperament: fastidious. Visits rarely. Wears a clean shirt. Leaves no crumbs.

Conservation status

RR
Respects robots.txt

SO
Selectively obedient

FE
Feral

Operated by AppleSeen today: 5This week: 563Resident since 02 Oct 2026

Accession Register

LIVE

Every arrival is catalogued on receipt. Cards are filed newest first.