Sports analysts are at risk of losing their jobs at the upcoming 2014 Sochi Olympics that will have their own team of animal oracles, including a clairvoyant dolphin, a seal sage and a couple of prophetic otters.

River otters Harry and Ashley live at the Sochi Zoo. And they have a gift of prophecy that they have successfully tested to predict the outcome of Kontinental Hockey League and European Figure Ice Skating competitions.

The method they use is simple but effective: zookeepers throw plastic rings with the names of competing teams into the pool and invite the prophetic otters to pick one and bring it onto the stage. It took the smarties six months to learn the trick, although the zoo confessed it didn’t keep a record of their predictions.

Another aquatic fortune-teller on the Sochi staff is Juno the dolphin, who lives in the Riviera dolphinarium and can tell the future by picking a ball with a winning team on it. Juno is far from a novice oracle. She has a great deal of experience predicting the sex of coming babies. She was given a sheet of white paper with a letter “b” for “boy” on one side and “g” for “girl” on the other. The magic dolphin then took a brush in her teeth and painted the half she liked best.

Busya the seal is the star of the Adler aquarium. She is famous far and wide for her ability to pick a card with the logo of a winning team without giving it a second thought – and making the right choice more often than not.

Of course, 2014 Olympic cities don’t hold the exclusive right for prophetic animals. For instance, the city of Tomsk can boast Paul the magic piglet that rose to fame with football fans in 2010 after he predicted the outcome of all standoffs involving the local FC Tom. The snub-nosed oracle foretold the future winner by picking a bowl of pig food with a team poster above it. For his contribution, the city nominated Paul to be the Sochi Olympic talisman – but he didn’t make the cut.

Another animal-farm prophet that will put her mojo to test at the 2014 Olympics is Gaudy the goat from Kazakhstan. She has already broken the record of the world-famous octopus Paul by predicting more sports results than her deceased German colleague. Gaudy foretells the outcome of competitions by picking a manger with a ball that bears the name of the winning team.

The results of the UEFA Euro 2012 in Kiev were monitored by Funtik the boar, although the animal turned out to be more of an anti-prophet, having guessed it all wrong.

The chief oracle in Belarus is a giant crab called Petrovich whose debut is slated for the 2014 World Hockey Championships. The magic crab was born off Norwegian shore and brought to the Russian city of Murmansk, from whence he was ferried to Moscow and then flown by helicopter to Belarus capital Minsk. He is ten years old, weighs over 3.5 kilos and can boast a one-meter span of his mighty pincers. He will live in a spacious aquarium with a water temperature of under 2 degrees Celsius.

Paul the octopus from Germany was the first animal prophet in modern history who started the fortune-telling craze. He came to worldwide attention for predicting the results of football matches where Germany was playing. Paul’s fame outlived him so that a monument to the octopus with his remains was installed in Paul’s native aquarium following his premature death.

During his divinations, Paul was presented with two food boxes that were placed in his tank. One of the boxes had a German flag on it, while the other featured a flag of a rival national team. After that PAUL was to decide the fate by opening one of the boxes. He guessed the outcome of all seven matches in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, including Germany’s defeats at the hands of Serbian and Spanish teams and its win over England and Argentine. He also predicted Germany’s third place playoff win over Uruguay and correctly named Spain as the gold winner.

Sport is not the sole field of expertise for animal oracles. Heidi the opossum at Germany’s Leipzig Zoo made international headlines in 2010 after she guessed all winners of major Oskar categories, the only exception being the Best Film where she chose the long-shot “127 Hours” to win over the eventual Oscar-winning “The King’s Speech.”

She foretold the fate by picking an Oskar statuette with food and a photo of the contender. Unfortunately, Heidi didn’t live up to the Sochi Olympic Games. She perished in 2011, being euthanized after a long and painful disease.

Reprinted from The Voice of Russia.