2010-07-10

Animals predicting sporting events

Pete, the German octopus who has been eerily predicting World Cup scores, has pegged Espanola as victorious over Netherlands in the 2010 FIFA World Cup final on Sunday:

Paul the psychic octopus has so far been correct about the results of all six Germany games, but his visions of Spanish victory tomorrow have left Dutch fans hungry for calamari.

Like many gamblers, Paul uses the tried-and-tested method of hooking a ­mussel from one of two labelled fish tanks, watched with bated breath by ever-larger crowds at Germany’s ­Oberhausen aquarium. He called it correctly when he favoured Germany over Argentina, England, Australia and Ghana, and he foresaw the country’s losses to Spain and Serbia.

But what other animals are big on predicting sports scores?

Canadians will of course remember Maggie the Monkey, the monkey who spun a wheel during NHL playoffs on TSN -- and tended to out-pace the commentators when it came to making predictions.

Technically a goat is responsible for the Cubs being kept out of the World Series since 1945, but it was his human owner who predicted it, not the actual goat.

Pete has some World Cup competition of his own: Mani the Parakeet has been cleaning up in the quarterfinals, and predicts Holland will defeat Spain. One of these two animals will turn out the winner, the other the loser.

Already in the World Cup loser parade is Sayco, the dolphin from Argentina who already lost in the Germany-Argentina prediction. Both he and Paul went for the hometown heroes, and only one emerged victorious.

A hot asian girl used I-Ching to predict the final. She's a hot chick, so click the link. She probably shouldn't be on this list, but she's likely no smarter than the octopus anyways so I guess its fair.

Even the Edmonton Valley Zoo has jumped on this craze.

South African vultures were predicting England to win it all in the World Cup, but the vulture was dead at the time, which means they are probably motivated to pick wrong to preserve the future brains of their race.

Back in the 20s, Jim the WonderDog was able to predict the winner of seven Kentucky Derbies and a World Series: presumably during those 7 years he predicted the Derby, he also predicted a lot of World Serii inaccurately. They never mention those parts, do they?

The Yanks also have a camel who has been pretty good at predicting NFL games, though she was wrong in 2010. I think. The Saints won the Superbowl this year, didn't they?

Finally, beginning last year, the Americans have had a monkey who predicts the NCAA March Madness.