A turtle and a kangaroo are latest World Cup psychic animals

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World Cup turtleImage source, AP

A psychic turtle has predicted Brazil will win their World Cup opening match against Croatia.

Big Head had to choose to eat a piece of fish from under a Brazilian or Croatian flag, or a ball that indicated a draw.

The Brazilian turtle chose the host country and is the latest in a growing list of psychic animals to predict the outcome of football matches.

We look at fortune tellers from past and present.

Image source, Australiazoo.com.au
Image caption,

Steve Irwin's daughter Bindi, who's 15, is photographed with Flopsy

A kangaroo from Australia Zoo in Queensland, originally called Flopsy but now renamed Predictaroo, was presented with two bowls of food labelled with the competing teams' names.

She quickly demonstrated who would score first in the upcoming game between Australia and Chile, making straight for her home country.

Image source, @wkavia

The Netherlands has Sikko the psychic guinea pig predicting results for this year's World Cup.

He returns after the Euro 2012 championships.

This year he'll feature on a local radio station every day making predictions about the day's games.

Sikko is still relatively unknown with only 121 followers on Twitter to date.

Image source, other

Four years ago the Germans had Paul the octopus, who caught the world's attention with his surprisingly accurate predictions of the tournament's results.

He consistently picked a mussel from a jar labelled Spain and indeed the country won the World Cup in 2010.

Sadly, Paul passed away a couple of months after the tournament at an aquarium in Germany.

A sea lion called Tick from Bangkok Zoo predicted Euro 2012 hosts Poland would beat Greece in the opening match, in fact it was a draw 1-1.

Maybe that's why he wasn't included in this year's World Cup predictions.

Two dragonfish called Big Huat and Small Huat were used in Singapore to decide on the draw for Euro 2012's first match between Poland and Greece.

Big Huat kept the surrounding crowd waiting for an agonising 20 minutes before biting down on one of three levers attached to food jars labelled with the two countries.

A pig picked by Ukraine to forecast the outcome of matches at Euro 2012 predicted four of the six group-stage contests.

Funtik the hog, who went by his Ukrainian name, Khryak, lived in a pen in the tournament fan zone in central Kiev.

He made his predictions by choosing between different bowls of food placed beside the flags of competing countries.

This is Fred the predicting ferret, who was chosen by organisers of Euro 2012 in Poland and Ukraine.

Fred chose between two bowls of fresh beef for each game, with each bowl bearing the flag of one of the countries playing.

It's thought he got the part for cuteness rather than accuracy.

Image source, Other

Citta the elephant from Krakow Zoo wrongly predicted that co-host Poland would beat Greece in Euro 2012.

The 33-year-old made her choice by picking a melon marked Poland.

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