With the world cup over we thought it was time to review the animals who attempted to guess the winners of this year’s tournament.
Following in the footsteps of Paul the octopus, the original oracle from 2010, many animals have taken on the challenge. The question is who could beat his 85% success rate and continue predicting into the future.
Every zoo appears to have given an animal a guess this year so below we bring you the best of the best in terms of animal oracles.
1. Pele the Psychic Piranha
Pele the piranha was The Sun newspapers head predictor for the world cup this year. For the course of the match he was moved into a plush new pad featuring goals, a pitch and a stadium. He would pick from pieces of food dangled beneath a flag. The manager of wildwoods, David Monk said, ‘We’re convinced Pele is psychic. We dangled three pieces of meat on the eve of the Peru friendly and he predicted a win.’
To further his career he managed to predict that there would be ‘draws in the Ecuador and Honduras games and got both right.’
2. Nelly the elephant
By kicking a ball into a net Nelly has become one of the most successful oracles. 30 out of the 33 guesses she have made have been accurate. That’s a 90% success rate. Nelly has been in this game for a while now. Her first selections were for the 2006 Women’s world cup she then went on to make selections on the 2010 world cup, Euro 2012 and the 2013 Champions league final.
The jewel is Nelly’s crown is an accurate prediction of Germany’s defeat over Argentina in the 2014 World cup final.
3. Predictaroo
Flopsy the kangaroo took a name change to become predictaroo for the duration of the world cup. Making her home at Australia Zoo this kangaroo takes one of the two food bowls she is offered.
Using this method she managed to successfully predict Germany’s defeat over Argentina. Currently she is taking suggestions on what she should predict next at her Twitter Page.
4. Bob the sloth
Bob the sloth is the animal oracle at the Toronto Zoo. As far as animal predictions go Bob’s must be pretty difficult as they are all made upside down. The simple sloth does not do anything fancy like the ball kicking elephant he just reaches out for one of two flags he is presented with.
He has a 70% success rate when it comes to making these predictions and he got Germanys win right as well.
So who’s our pick for the best animal oracles of 2014. As much as the kangaroo is cute and the sloth has done well we think the elephant has it. She has a 90% success rate something even the original clairvoyant Paul couldn’t reach. He achieved an 85% success rate back in 2010.
Photo Credits
Octopus-By Tilla (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Sloth-Toronto Zoo
