Paul the Octopus and Billy the cat: the animals who predict World Cup winners

Right now, the sharpest pundit at the 2026 World Cup isn’t on a broadcast panel. He’s a one-year-old British shorthair in Newry who picks winners by patting a flag with his paw, and at the time of writing he hasn’t been wrong once.

We have watched this movie before. Sixteen years ago the oracle had eight arms, lived in a German tank, and made his picks by eating a mussel. His name was Paul, and for one summer he was the most trusted forecaster in world football.

Who was Paul the Octopus?

Paul hatched in 2008 at a Sea Life centre in Weymouth, on England’s south coast, and was later moved to the Sea Life aquarium in Oberhausen, Germany. He was an ordinary common octopus (Octopus vulgaris) with a very un-ordinary side gig.

The setup was almost insultingly simple. Before a match, his keepers lowered two clear boxes into his tank, each holding a mussel and each marked with a competing nation’s flag. Whichever box Paul prised open and ate from first became his pick. No tactics boards, no expected-goals models. Just a hungry cephalopod and two shellfish.

Paul’s record: 12 right out of 14

Human analysts spend careers reading formations. Paul read lunch, and still finished with a career hit rate near 85.7%.

The maths behind that number: he called four of Germany’s six matches correctly at Euro 2008, then went on an absurd run at the 2010 World Cup, nailing all seven of Germany’s games. For the final he skipped his home team entirely and picked Spain over the Netherlands. Spain won. His 2010 tournament record: eight picks, eight hits, zero misses.

Death threats over a mollusc’s lunch

Getting things right made Paul enemies. When he tipped Argentina to lose to Germany, an Argentine chef posted an octopus recipe in retaliation, which at least stayed in the realm of comedy.

The German reaction did not. After Paul foresaw Germany’s semi-final defeat, furious fans sent death threats, and the aquarium was reportedly offered protection for him. A boycott over a boneless invertebrate’s snack preference tells you more about football supporters than about Paul.

Billy the cat is doing it again in 2026

Enter Billy Heartnose, the aforementioned Newry cat, who has turned the 2026 World Cup into his personal highlight reel. His owners, Linka Lin and Mark Kelly, set two small flags in front of him before kickoff and let him tap one. As of late June, Billy had called every single non-draw match correctly, 19 in a row, a streak CNN’s sports desk and plenty of others have now put on camera.

It began by accident. Linka came home from an event with a bag of leftover flags, the tournament happened to be on, and the couple thought, why not. The clips took off. Billy, being a cat, remains supremely unbothered by fame. His owners are refreshingly honest about the whole thing and refuse to overclaim on his behalf; the one hiccup in his run came when a fly drifted through the room and broke his concentration mid-pick.

And here is the part that rhymes with 2010: some supporters whose teams Billy snubbed have sent what his owners politely call “borderline threatening” messages. Same tournament, same silliness, a different species in the crosshairs. Sixteen years and we have learned nothing.

So is it a gift, or is it just the odds?

Here is my honest read: it’s luck wearing a costume, and that’s exactly why it’s fun.

Scientists who looked at Paul offered the polite version. Octopuses are colourblind but sharply tuned to brightness, contrast, and horizontal lines, and the flags of Germany, Spain and Serbia all carry bold horizontal bands that may simply have caught his eye. The blunter version is pure arithmetic: a two-way pick is a coin flip, and if enough zoos around the world run animal oracles every tournament, probability more or less guarantees that one of them lands a flawless streak. We only ever hear about that one. The elephant who guessed wrong three times doesn’t get a CNN segment.

None of which spoils the show. Paul died peacefully of natural causes in October 2010, still perfect for that World Cup, and immediately spawned imitators: Nelly the Elephant, Achilles the deaf cat in Russia, and a small menagerie of hopefuls since. Billy is just the newest name on a very old list.

Why we keep crowning animal oracles

A tournament is weeks of tension with no control over the outcome. Handing the forecast to a cat and a couple of flags is a way of laughing at that helplessness, and it beats another pundit telling you what the xG says. And when the same superstition points the other way, we spend centuries calling a black cat bad luck for crossing our path.

We’re a dog blog, so we’ll admit the dogs mostly sit this circus out. They aren’t picking flags. They’re on the sofa next to you, unbothered by the score, ready to be thrilled either way the moment you are. Not a bad oracle to have, honestly.

Paul earned his statue. Billy is earning his treats. And somewhere a fan is still typing an angry message to an animal that cannot read. Football, reliably, stays ridiculous.