Yesterday it became known that the giant crab Petrovich will predict the results of the World Hockey Championship 2014, which will be held in Belarus. In this regard, "Soviet Sport" recalls the most famous animal predictors.
OCTOPUS PAUL
The most famous predictive animal, the octopus Paul, from which the boom in “live oracles” began, lived in the aquarium in the German city of Oberhausen.
The finest hour of the octopus came at the 2010 FIFA World Cup, during which Paul guessed the results of the German national team matches by choosing food from a feeder with the German tricolor applied to it.
As a result, Paul guessed the outcome of all the fights of the "German car" except for the final, in which the wards of Joachim Loew lost to the Spaniards.
ELEPHANT NELLY
Paul's fantastic success spurred the Germans to choose new predictors.
In 2011, during the Women's World Cup, the role of the oracle was performed by Nelly the elephant from the Serengeti Natural Park.
The elephant, to the surprise of many, predicted the results of all the matches of the German national team, including the defeat of the German women in the quarterfinals.
Nellidal's choice was simple - she tried to score the ball into the net. In whose goal the ball flew into, that team then lost.
BOAR FUNTIK
Euro 2012 also had its own predictor. The results of the matches held in Poland and Ukraine football championship tried to predict the Kyiv boar Funtik.
The boar predicted the results with varying degrees of success - if the “prophet” could still “see” Russia’s victory in the match with the Czech Republic, then the match between Ukraine and Sweden, which, according to the boar’s forecast, should have ended in the defeat of the hosts of the tournament, ended exactly the other way around - with the victory of the Ukrainians.
Later, however, Funticrehabilitated, choosing before the matches Greece - Russia and the Czech Republic - Poland bowls of food with the flags of the Greeks and Czechs.
OCTOPUS IKER
However, the octopus remained the most popular predictive animal.
One of these was Iker, an octopus living in Benalmadena, Spain and named after Real Madrid goalkeeper Iker Casillas.
Iker turned out to be quite a successful oracle. He was able to predict the outcome of two Spanish clasicos, as well as Real Madrid's victory in the Copa del Rey in 2011. Although there were mistakes, such as the prophecy according to which Real Madrid should have reached the 2011 Champions League final.
PARROT ROMA
At one time, based on Paul's predictions of the octopus, Soviet Sport organized the Nostradamus-2012 contest, the winner of which became the newspaper's official oracle during the Euro-2012 matches.
The winner in the end was the parrot Roma, who predicted the results of the matches of the Russian championship best of all and scored 51 points in the end.
During the European Championship Roma, however, blundered. Success in the form of the victory of the Russian national team over the Czech Republic was followed by failures in the form of a victory in the 1/4 finals of the British over the Italians, reaching the final of the German national team and the victory of the Italian national team in the decisive match.
Undoubtedly, Paul has become the most famous octopus in the world. Personally, I don’t know others at all, except perhaps from an old Soviet cartoon. Remember: "Now add the legs, we get octopuses."
For the first time, Paul "lit up" at Euro 2008, predicting the outcome of matches involving the German national team (the eight-legged Nostradamus lived in the aquarium in the German city of Oberhausen). The technology of predictions was simple, if not primitive - two feeders with flags of national teams were placed in front of the animal, into which the oracle crawled - he won.
The peak of Paul's career came at the 2010 World Cup, where he guessed all the outcomes of matches involving the German national team, and also predicted the winner of the final match (this was Paul's only prediction for a match without the participation of the Germans).
After the death of Paul, a monument was erected - an octopus sat on soccer ball in which his own ashes are immured.
Boar Funtik and ferret Fred
The idea was liked, and Paul found his followers. During Euro 2012, the boar Funtik living in Kyiv and the Kharkov ferret Fred acted as an oracle.
Funtik became famous for predicting the victory of the hosts in starting match with the Swedish national team, but things did not go further for him. And after the Ukrainian national team, contrary to Funtik's prediction, lost to the British, some suggested letting the seer into the fat.
But Funtik predicted exactly half the outcome of two matches with the participation of the Russian team, predicting a victory over the Czechs and a defeat in the match with the Greek team.
This member of the cephalopod family was named after Iker Casillas. He lived in the Spanish Malaga and became famous for the fact that in 2011 he guessed the outcome of two "", as well as the victory of "Real" in the Spanish Cup.
But with the winner of the Champions League, Casillas then made a mistake - he bet on Manchester United to win, and Barcelona won the match.
A sea turtle nicknamed Big Head from the Brazilian city of Praia do Forte predicted the results of matches of the 2014 World Cup. She was more difficult than her predecessors - the turtle had to choose from three options - a draw was added to the possible outcomes.
Big Head managed to correctly predict the victory of the Brazilians in the opening match of the championship.
There was a slightly different principle for determining the winner. An elephant from the Serengeti Park (Germany) did not choose food, but sent the ball into a special goal marked with the moisture of rival teams.
Into whose goal the ball flew, that team was considered the loser. Nellie did a good job on women's championship World Cup 2011, predicted the winner and the victory of the German team in the semi-finals of the Brazilian World Cup.
Why We Don't Need Paul's Followers
These are far from all representatives of the glorious detachment of soothsayers, but the most famous of them. There was also the competition of "Soviet Sport" "Nostardamus-2012", where a parrot, a dog, a fish, a cow, a guinea pig acted as predictors, but you can't list them all.
So why don't we need them anymore? Yes, because each joke is funny only the first time, repeated repetition turns it into stupidity.
Therefore, I hope that at the home world championship they will not slip us another cattle and be touched when she runs up to the feeder with someone's flag. Football is interesting without it.
Oracle cat Achilles in the city press center of the 2018 FIFA World Cup during the ceremony of predicting the winner of the opening match between the teams of Russia and Saudi Arabia
PHOTO: Roman Pimenov/Interpress/TASSFor the northern capital, the Hermitage cats have become not only profitable and in a simple way rodent control, but a real "trick" of the museum. And snow-white and also became famous throughout the country for its incredible flair.
Achilles has not heard since birth, but it seems that nature itself compensated for this shortcoming with a strong intuition, the press service of the Hermitage told VM. We have specially trained him. The cat was shown some thing, and then they hid it. Achilles found this item easily. It also happened that he dug out of the ground!
A year ago, during the Confederations Cup, Achilles guessed the outcome of almost all matches
The prediction scheme is traditional: two bowls with the flags of the countries participating in the championship are placed in front of Achilles - from whichever he eats food, that team will win.
It would seem that everything is simple. Come to the feeder with your native flag and start to dine to thunderous applause. But no. match only from the second time. Obviously, according to the cat, the match with Saudi Arabia will be tense.
Of course, there are no scientific justifications for trusting the predictions of animals, - zoopsychologist Marianna Gladkikh told VM. - And if an animal guesses the outcome of a match, then in society this instantly gives rise to a series of conspiracy theories. But even to help the animal accept right choice For example, putting a piece of meat in dry food, you need to know for sure who will win the match.
The Football Federation appoints Achilles as the oracle of the 2018 World Cup
However, sometimes animal predictions turn out to be more accurate than bookmakers' versions. A year ago during almost all matches. Everyone who watched the game remembers that in the Chile match against Germany, the Chilean team was stronger. But the cat didn’t even hesitate - he immediately climbed into the house, near which stood the flag of Germany!
Even FIFA could not pass by such impressive results. The Football Federation has appointed Achilles as the oracle of the 2018 World Cup.
NAMED NIKA
A year ago, the Moscow Zoo decided to keep up with museum colleagues from St. Petersburg, and polar bear Nika, chosen by the Welcome 2018 travel portal, became the official predictor of the 2017 Confederations Cup.
And not in vain - Nika confidently approached the bowl of fish, which had a German flag, and predicted the victory of the German team over the Australian team in the Confederations Cup match. The Germans did not disappoint and won with a score of 2:3.
Nika appeared at the Moscow Zoo in early September 2016. An emaciated seven-month-old bear cub was found near the Chukotka village of Ryrkaypiy. Her mother most likely died, and zoologists recommended that Nika not be released into the wild, as she would almost certainly have died too.
The bear cub was delivered to the Moscow Zoo over 7,000 kilometers using a military helicopter and aircraft provided by the Russian Ministry of Defense. The total flight time was over 40 hours.
BETWEEN SKUNKS AND GOAT
While the cats are gradually choosing the winners group matches, in Samara decided to play big.
A goat named Zabiyaka determined the winner of the competition. She made her choice among the participating countries - Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Germany, Russia and France.
The animal was asked to approach one of the bowls of treats placed near the flags. The goat gave preference to the Belgian football team. Let's see in July if her expectations were justified.
PAUL, LEGEND
The history of animal oracles began with the octopus Paul. He lived in the aquarium "Center for Marine Life" in the German town of Oberhausen. Before octopus predictions became a national treasure, the city was famous for its former mines and the oldest short film festival.
The "finest hour" of the animal came in 2008, when, at the height of the European Championship, he correctly predicted the outcome of four out of six matches. The patriotic octopus in his predictions always chose the German team as the winner.
During the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, the octopus correctly predicted the outcome of all eight matches, including the defeat of his native team against Serbia in the group stage and against Spain in the semi-finals, as well as the results of the match for bronze and gold.
The prediction technology developed for Paul was extremely simple: two feeders with flags were lowered into the aquarium where the octopus lived. It was believed that the team that opened the feeder with the flag of which he opened first would win.
Sport
The football fever of the 2018 World Cup is in full swing.
Who will become the world champion, and who will remain outside the football festival?
Predicting the outcome of matches is another World Cup and European football game that has become widespread over the past decade.
Who will win the 2018 FIFA World Cup
The outcome of the game the team undertook to predict to people the so-called oracle animals.
The match prediction process takes place in a very simple way: an oracle animal chooses one of two balls (or any other object) that has the name of the country written on it or the flag of the participating country.
Thus, with its choice, the oracle "predicts" the victory of one or another team.
Octopus Paul
Recall that the tradition of predicting matches in this way originated at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Thanks to his accurate predictions, the German octopus Paul then became a real sensation and a world celebrity.
Then the tradition of predicting the outcome of matches was continued by other animals.
Animal oracles 2018
The main oracle of the 2018 World Cup was a white cat named Achilles, who lives in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg.
What is known about this animal?
Achilles is a resident of the city of St. Petersburg, he is about 2.5 years old. The animal is named after one of the characters of ancient Greek mythology. Achilles continued the path of his parents: he is in the service of the State Hermitage.
The animal serves honestly and regularly does its job: it protects the masterpieces of world culture from rodents. The cat is not thoroughbred, but beautiful, prone to overweight, so the Hermitage workers carefully monitor his diet and periodically put the cat on a diet.
According to museum staff, Achilles is a deaf cat, but it is his deafness that contributes to the development of clairvoyance. The cat really has a very keen sense of smell.
In addition, due to his deafness, Achilles is not distracted by extraneous sounds and does not experience additional stress when he is filmed on cameras by endless paparazzi and ordinary curious people.
“It happens quite often: when you lack something, it is compensated by something else,” says the Deputy Director of the Hermitage and press secretary of the guard cats Maria Khaltunen. "That's why he can safely be called a good oracle."
The deaf cat predicts the victory of one of the teams by choosing a bowl of food (a standard technique used by animal oracles at this World Cup).
What did Achilles the cat predict?
The "career" of the Hermitage cat is as follows:
Confederations Cup matches - 2017 (3 correct predictions out of 4), as for the 2018 World Cup, the cat guessed 4 out of 5 matches. Thus, on July 1, 2018, Achilles accurately predicted 7 out of 9 matches, his efficiency is 78 percent.
But Achilles is far from the only animal that can predict the outcome of matches with amazing accuracy. Only in Russia there are at least a dozen such predictors.
So, the list of so-called oracles included the following animals: the bear Yakov Potapych from Moscow, the female tapir Cleopatra from Nizhny Novgorod, the lemur Spartak from Yekaterinburg, the Sochi otter Harry, the goat Zabiyaka from Samara.
Forecasts of Yakov Potapych
Bear Yakov Potapych is a resident of the capital and is rightfully considered a Muscovite.
Yakov Potapych was not mistaken when he predicted the victory of the Russian team in the matches with Saudi Arabia and Egypt, he also guessed a draw in the match of such giants of world football as Portugal and Spain. In addition, the clubfoot predicted a draw in the Argentina-Iceland match.
By the way, it was Potapych who so amused many guests of the capital at the very beginning of the World Cup, when he appeared before them in the form of his national team. This cheerful predictor is also an unspoken symbol of Russia.
Tapir Cleopatra
And in the Nizhny Novgorod zoo lives a female tapir named Cleopatra. She has long been a favorite of both residents of the city and visitors. The animal is very sociable, easily makes contact, and more recently it also makes predictions for the games that take place in its hometown of Nizhny Novgorod.
It is worth noting that Cleopatra accurately guessed the outcome of three matches in a row, correctly determining the winner. However, for the fourth time, the animal made a mistake and before the match Argentina-Croatia chose a bowl on which the flag of Argentina was depicted.
With her choice, Cleopatra let people know that she was betting on the South Americans, but everything did not go according to this scenario: the game ended with a score of 0:3 in favor of the Croats.
Lemur Spartacus
A lemur named Spartak, who lives in the Yekaterinburg Zoo, also makes predictions for the 2018 World Cup matches.
Spartacus is offered a choice of two plates of delicacies - a banana or dates. The outcome of the match depends on what the lemur prefers.
Lemur has already guessed the outcome of several matches, including the victory of the Russian team over Egypt and Saudi Arabia. But in the Russia-Spain match, Spartak behaved unpatriotically, predicting victory for the Spaniards.
As we all already know, the Russian team beat the legendary Red Furia in a penalty shootout. Therefore, the animal was wrong in its prediction.
Otter Harry
Otter-predictor Harry lives in sunny Sochi, the animal also guesses the outcome of the games at the 2018 World Cup.
It is worth noting that Harry is one of the five oracle animals, which almost always correctly guess the results of matches.
Harry accurately predicted the defeat of Saudi Arabia and Egypt in the games with Russia, she also pointed out that the Russians would lose to the Uruguayans.
But in predicting the match between Spain and Russia, the otter also behaved unpatriotically. Two balls were thrown into a pool filled with water: with the image of the flags of both countries. Otter purposefully headed for the ball with the Spanish flag.
Thus, the otter predicted defeat for her compatriots, and, as it turned out, was mistaken in her predictions. The Russian team won the game against the Spaniards.
Goat Ruff
Goat Zabiyaka, who lives in the Samara Zoo, also gives very accurate predictions regarding the matches of the 2018 World Cup.
The animal guessed not only the matches that took place in her hometown of Samara, but also the rest of the games that were held in other cities of Russia.
But the last prediction of the goat turned out to be wrong. The bully made it clear that the Mexican team would beat Brazil in the one-eighth final. However, the miracle did not happen: the Brazilians are in the quarter-finals, and the Mexicans are packing their bags and going home. The goat made a mistake in its prediction.
Dolphin predicted the match
And, of course, we must pay tribute to the dolphin with the prophetic name Wanda. The mammal lives in the Great Sochi Dolphinarium and also makes its own predictions.
This is the only animal from the list of oracles that predicted a sensational victory for the Russian team in a difficult game with the Spaniards. Russian fans immediately dubbed Wanda the dolphin the most patriotic oracle of this World Cup.
Only he believed that our players could defeat one of the strongest football teams of the Old World.
predictive animals - a feature of the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Results predict pigs, hippos and even meerkats
Photo: Julia PYKHALOVA
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The fashion for predictive animals in sports came 10 years ago. The 2008 European Football Championship glorified the octopus Paul and the aquarium of German Oberhausen to the whole world. Who came up with the idea of lowering feeders with food and flags of the participants in the football championship into the aquarium for fortune-telling is no longer important. The bet worked. The octopus regularly opened the German feeder, and Germany won.
Since then, the octopus, peace be upon him (Paul did not survive his triumph much), has gained many followers. During the World Cup in Russia, the number of oracle animals increased significantly. Their owners also expect to earn on the fame of their pets.
Pig's Choice
Where, if not in the homeland of football, in England, all kinds of Nostradamus appear. Pig Mystic Marcus from the city of Hedge, Derbyshire, has been engaged in predictions for a long time. He specializes not only in sports - for example, the boar "foresaw" Britain's exit from the European Union in advance. Now it's football time. The choice went like this: the owner of the animal laid out identical green apples on the ground, marked with country flags, and Markus, after thinking, ate those that he predicted victory in the World Cup. According to him, Belgium, Argentina, Uruguay and Nigeria will reach the semi-finals of the championship. Forecast for the final will be later.
The British have gone almost as far as mice in divination. Little meerkats from the English zoo Drayton Manor in Staffordshire were among the first to risk predicting the outcome of the opening match of the 2018 World Cup between the national teams of Russia and Saudi Arabia. They were offered a choice of flour worms. The animals grouped around the sign with our flag and had a meal. And you guessed it!
Achilles solution
In Russia, the animals also believed in our team in the opening match, perhaps more than the fans. Husky Elsa from Kemerovo guesses with the help of balls - whose ball chooses, that team wins. Before the game with the Saudis, she confidently made a bet on the Russians. There was a little trick here: under each ball there was a treat for the dog.
Achilles the cat from the Hermitage has been deaf since birth. But on his psychic abilities it has no effect. He became famous last year at the Confederations Cup when he guessed three of the four results of the tournament. The cat chooses a bowl of food under the flag of the winning team. The choice of the winner in the opening match of the Russians at the World Cup was not easy for the “blue-eyed blond”. (He got fat over the winter and was obviously full.) But in the end it was our bowl. Now Achilles will guess for all the matches of the tournament that will be held in St. Petersburg, for this he was even put on a special diet with three meals a day.
But the Kaliningrad hippos Glyasik and Mil sat down in a puddle. More precisely, their opinions about the result in the opening match were divided. Experts considered that the animals thus bet on a draw ...
AND AT THIS TIME
What are the bookies saying?
They almost unanimously believe in the Brazilians as future world champions - the bet on them is 5:1. Bookmakers have a little less faith in the current winners of the championship - the German national team (5.75: 1). The French are quoted 7:1. The Spaniards are ranked almost as well (7.125:1). And only then come Argentina with Messi (10:1) and the Belgians, in whom the oracle animals believe so (12:1). The top ten also includes the British, the Portuguese, Uruguay and Croatia. The chances of the Russian team are 61.75:1.
KNOW-HOW
Iron competitors
Robot Baxter predicted the outcome of the first match at VDNKh
Two hours before the start of the game Russia - Saudi Arabia At the VDNKh Robot Station, the question also hovered: who will win? And what does the Baxter robot think, which usually “works” as a sorter at the plant, and in its free time plays tic-tac-toe with VDNKh visitors?
For several days, the robot memorized football predictions, and as a result, its neural network learned to copy human intuition, the organizers assure.
Why did you decide to ask Baxter the question? Exactly one year ago, he correctly guessed the outcome of 80% of the matches of the Confederations Cup. He prepared for the World Cup just as thoroughly and will guess the score of the games with the help of "intellectual brains".
We lay out three cubes in front of the robot - two with the names of the teams and one with the inscription "draw", - says Artur Zarkhi, director of the Robostation.
Baxter thought a little and chose a cube with the inscription "Team Russia". And, as it turned out, I was not mistaken!