On the many joys of sports-predicting animals

I was recently sent a link to an article about Fiona, who is a hippopotamus. Fiona, who has been has been in the sports prediction business for some time, picked the Kansas City Chiefs to beat the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl 54. She makes her choice known by vomiting on the logo of the team she believes will win. Or believes doesn’t win. I suspect nobody has actually been able to ask her:

Fiona stands/vomits upon a grand tradition of predictive animals, made minor celebrities by the power of social media. Paul the Psychic Octopus, celebrated for his soccer predictions, has been succeeded by generations of clairvoyant cephalopods. At SB Nation, a search for experts’ picks will include not just human opinions but those of convenient dogs (it’s unclear whether this is some sort of self-abasing meta-commentary on behalf of those experts and, frankly, I’m afraid to ask).

In addition to Paul and SB Nation’s household pets, a search for sports-predicting animals turns up a parakeet, a miniature pig, a kangaroo, several sharks, a goat, a panda, an elephant and dogs and cats beyond mortal reckoning. People love these stories. I love these stories. Why?

The parsimonious answer is that the overlap on the Venn diagram between people who love sports and people who love goofy videos of animals is rather large. It would take a hard-hearted internet dweller indeed to sneer at Mystic Marcus the pig, for instance. Cute animal videos are great. Cute animal videos that pretend to be relevant to my other interests? Even better.

But I wonder if there isn’t more to it. After all, the use of animals to predict the future didn’t begin with Paul and the Oberhausen Sea Life Centre. Animals can see and hear things that people can’t, a fact that’s been known for essentially all of human history, and its not a surprise that fact inspired, for instance, the Oracle Bones of the Shang in ancient China.

The inspection of animal entrails for their predictive rather than purely tactile qualities is similarly ancient. Haruspicy, practiced most notably by the Romans, was the method used to warn Julius Caesar’s of the Ides of March. Admittedly, any sort of grasp of the political mood of Rome at the time would also have done so, but one has to be impressed by a sheep’s liver picking up on that sort of commentary.

The Romans didn’t just use dead animals to predict the future either. They were also masters of augury, which read omens in the flights of birds. Romulus himself used it to determine where the city ought to be founded, receiving better news from his sightings on the Palatinate Hill than his doomed brother Remus did on the Aventine.

They were avid sportsmen, the Romans, and it’s difficult to imagine these techniques weren’t used to predict the results of chariot races or gladiatorial battles. Obviously it would be quite hard to celebritise these animal oracles — haruspicy is a one-time sort of deal, and it’s difficult to give e.g. a flock of vultures a catchy nickname.

So maybe our modern tradition of sports-predicting animals comes from a multi-cultural urge to see the future through our furry (or slimy) friends. Or maybe we just like cute and silly stories and videos. WHO CAN SAY?