Trains, Petri Dishes and a Struggling Sea Lion Join Football’s Dubious Oracles

The sea lioness Hilla from Leipzig Zoo, Germany aims for a goal with Scotland and German marked balls Thursday June 13, 2024, where she predicted that the two teams will play out a draw during their opening match ar the start of the Euro 2024 soccer championship on Friday. (dpa/AP)
The sea lioness Hilla from Leipzig Zoo, Germany aims for a goal with Scotland and German marked balls Thursday June 13, 2024, where she predicted that the two teams will play out a draw during their opening match ar the start of the Euro 2024 soccer championship on Friday. (dpa/AP)
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Trains, Petri Dishes and a Struggling Sea Lion Join Football’s Dubious Oracles

The sea lioness Hilla from Leipzig Zoo, Germany aims for a goal with Scotland and German marked balls Thursday June 13, 2024, where she predicted that the two teams will play out a draw during their opening match ar the start of the Euro 2024 soccer championship on Friday. (dpa/AP)
The sea lioness Hilla from Leipzig Zoo, Germany aims for a goal with Scotland and German marked balls Thursday June 13, 2024, where she predicted that the two teams will play out a draw during their opening match ar the start of the Euro 2024 soccer championship on Friday. (dpa/AP)

Spare a thought for Hilla the "oracle" sea lion from Leipzig Zoo, whose reputation for football prophesy is hanging by a thread after she predicted Scotland would hold Germany to an unlikely draw at Euro 2024.

Had she not watched the two sides? Did she know nothing of football history and Scotland's repeated failures at major tournaments? Seemingly not and the 5-1 thrashing dealt out to Steve Clarke's side by the hosts has called Hilla's soothsaying credentials into question.

No major football tournament would be complete without a host of fortune-telling animals but surprisingly, or perhaps not, not all of these "oracles" turn out to be very good.

Hilla has since regained some respectability by correctly predicting Germany would beat Hungary, a result that immediately elevated her above Oobi-Ooobi, another Leipzig based clairvoyant, in the oracle league table.

Poor Oobi-Ooobi, a koala who looked less than impressed to be hauled in front of a camera to do his soothsaying, was a designated oracle at Euro 2016, but just couldn't catch a break. Forced to choose between eucalyptus leaves in containers bearing the competing countries' flags, he got it wrong every time.

Of course, like all oracles, it is possible that their messages are just misunderstood.

When the Oracle at Delphi famously told Croesus, King of Lydia, that if he waged war on the Persians he would destroy a great kingdom, he was delighted. A kingdom was destroyed, but it was his own.

So when Hilla, who seemed equally comfortable with both her left and right flipper, knocked the German and Scottish balls towards goal, she could just have been predicting a second-half consolation for the Scots and not the unlikely draw her keepers assumed.

There were no such excuses for Suzie, a 15-stone (95-kg) pig who tucked into a clearly-labelled bucket of food bearing an England flag, shunning Italy, when asked to predict the Euro 2020 final result.

Suzie clearly did not think that Gareth Southgate's side would retreat into their shell after taking an early lead or consider England's terrible record in penalty shootouts if it was all square after extra time.

There was also Mani the parakeet, whose early good form at the 2010 World Cup ended in disappointment with semi-final and final failures or the animals at Chemnitz Zoo who were wrong on all of Germany's group-stage games at the same tournament.

Anyone who thinks the phenomenon of non-humans predicting football results has gone too far has clearly never been to Switzerland where psychic gut bacteria determined incorrectly that the Swiss would beat Scotland on Wednesday.

Yet in another blow to Hilla's credibility, some E. coli bacteria in Germany managed to predict that the hosts would beat Scotland in the tournament's opener.

Germany's trains may have occasionally struggled to cope with the hordes of fans at Euro 2024, but this hasn't stopped one operator in Hamburg entering into the true spirit of an international tournament -- using a train to punt a football into a goal to try to predict the outcomes of matches.

So it seems that for every Paul the Octopus, the trend setter whose uncanny divinations during the 2010 World Cup alerted every PR department in the world to the human appetite for implausible animal seers, there are countless less impressive pets, trains and even petri dishes.



Chinese Marriages Slid by a Fifth in 2024, Fanning Birthrate Concerns

A woman (L) and a girl pose for a picture in Beijing on February 9, 2025. (Photo by Pedro PARDO / AFP)
A woman (L) and a girl pose for a picture in Beijing on February 9, 2025. (Photo by Pedro PARDO / AFP)
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Chinese Marriages Slid by a Fifth in 2024, Fanning Birthrate Concerns

A woman (L) and a girl pose for a picture in Beijing on February 9, 2025. (Photo by Pedro PARDO / AFP)
A woman (L) and a girl pose for a picture in Beijing on February 9, 2025. (Photo by Pedro PARDO / AFP)

Marriages in China dropped by a fifth last year, the biggest drop on record, despite manifold efforts by authorities to encourage young couples to wed and have children to boost the country's declining population.
More than 6.1 million couples registered for marriage last year, down from 7.68 million a year earlier, figures from the Ministry of Civil Affairs showed, according to Reuters.
Declining interest in getting married and starting a family has long been blamed on the high cost of childcare and education in China. On top of that, sputtering economic growth over the past few years has made it difficult for university graduates to find work and those that do have jobs feel insecure about their long-term prospects.
But for Chinese authorities, boosting interest in marriage and baby-making is a pressing concern.
China has the second-biggest population in the world at 1.4 billion but it is aging quickly.
The birth rate fell for decades due to China's 1980-2015 one-child policy and rapid urbanization. And in the coming decade, roughly 300 million Chinese - the equivalent of almost the entire US population - are expected to enter retirement.
Measures taken last year by authorities to tackle the problem included urging China's colleges and universities to provide "love education" to emphasize positive views on marriage, love, fertility and family.
And in November, China's state council or cabinet, told local governments to direct resources towards fixing China's population crisis and spread respect for childbearing and marriages "at the right age."
Last year saw a slight rise in births after a lull due to the pandemic and because 2024 was the Chinese zodiac year of the dragon - with children born that year considered likely to be ambitious and have great fortune.
But even with the increase in births, the country's population fell for a third consecutive year.
The data also showed that more than 2.6 million couples filed for divorce last year, up 1.1% from 2023.