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Penguin Prophet Pablo Predicts England to Play It Cool During Russia Game

© Photo : The National SEA LIFE Centre BirminghamPenguins at the National SEA LIFE Centre in Birmingham.
Penguins at the National SEA LIFE Centre in Birmingham. - Sputnik International
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Penguins at The National Sea Life Center in Birmingham have predicted that England will win their first game in the Euro 2016 against Russia.

Pablo the Penguin and the rest of his friends are huge football fans and couldn't resist predicting who would win during the Euro 2016 England and Russia game.

© Photo : The National SEA LIFE Centre BirminghamA penguin at the National SEA LIFE Centre Birmingham stands in front of a bucket depicting the flag of England.
A penguin at the National SEA LIFE Centre Birmingham stands in front of a bucket depicting the flag of England. - Sputnik International
A penguin at the National SEA LIFE Centre Birmingham stands in front of a bucket depicting the flag of England.

The tournament — which starts on the June 10, 2016 — will reveal which country has the best football team in Europe. England's first match is against Russia and is tipped to be an exciting one.

Pablo's prediction has increased anticipation levels ahead of the event. James Cant, penguin keeper at National Sea Life, has said that the Antarctic creatures enjoy predicting games and like football a lot.

"Yes they have done quite a few sporting competitions, last year's they made predictions in the Rugby World Cup, plus they have done two FA Cup Finals. They are not quite good with politics, done a few general elections," Mr Cant told Sputnik.

"They don't watch football on TV, but they do enjoy chasing it around in their pool and they chase down fish so, yes they are quite sporty."

© Photo : The National SEA LIFE Centre BirminghamPenguins at the National SEA LIFE Centre in Birmingham.
Penguins at the National SEA LIFE Centre in Birmingham. - Sputnik International
Penguins at the National SEA LIFE Centre in Birmingham.

Because the penguins are living in England, there are suspicions that the creatures may be somewhat biased towards their home country. This is a speculation that James firmly denies:

"I don't think so; half the penguins are from New Zealand, and the other half from Canada, so [they're] not biased towards England… A lot of our keepers are English," Cant told Sputnik.

Sea World's curator came up with the idea, placing the penguins' food on different rocks, labeled with England and Russian flags. Whichever bucket the penguins chose was believed to be the one they had picked as the winner of the World Cup.

The hope is that the penguins will in fact go on to predict even more events.

"We are hoping to have them predict a few more games, and for a reward we give them different types of fish to eat," Cant said.

Pablo and his friends are not the first animals to predict sporting events.

In 2010, all eyes were on Paul the octopus who predicted the games of the 2010 World Cup.

​As for other animals which have a sixth sense when predicting tournaments, Alistair and Derek, a couple of minature donkey psychics, sniffed out England as the worthy winner against Italy in the 2014 World Cup.

Again in 2014, parrots Sage and Oscar predicted a win for Brazil in their World Cup opening match.

Next came a big loggerhead turtle, another Nostradamus, choosing to eat a fish hung from a Brazilian flag rather than a Croatian flag, correctly predicting Brazil would beat Croatia in the opening game of World Cup 2014. 

However, we'll have to wait until Euro 2016 kicks off to see whether Pablo the penguin and his mates are any good at predicting winners. 

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