GOAL.COM

Remember Paul the Octopus? The beloved sea creature predicted World Cup matches in 2010 with uncanny accuracy.

Well Paul has a successor in the animal football prediction game: a polar bear named Nika.

The two-year-old is a resident of the Moscow Zoo. She was rescued as an orphan in a village in eastern Russia after, according to local residents, her mother was lost to poachers.

Nika has taken on the mantle of the official animal predictor of the Confederations Cup, which is currently underway in her home nation.

So far, Nika has made four predictions, scratching up a 25% success rate — when she correctly chose Germany to defeat Australia.

The psychic polar bear failed to foresee a Hector Moreno last-gasp equalizer that salvaged a point for Mexico -- her soothsaying abilities instead leading her to believe Portugal would triumph.

On Wednesday it was Cristiano Ronaldo who scuppered the ferocious beast's prediction that Russia would beat Portugal in Wednesday's Group A clash. She also incorrectly predicted an upset in New Zealand's surprisingly feisty encounter with Mexico, which ended in a 2-1 comeback win for El Tri.

For Thursday's Group B games, Nika has chosen Cameroon to beat Australia and Germany to defeat Chile.

Perhaps this will serve as a cautionary tale to zoologists thinking about hitching upon the upcoming World Cup's coattails by exploiting an animal's necessity to eat so as to appear on feel good news segments across the globe.  

Paul the Octopus seven out of seven during the 2010 World Cup will never be repeated, it is time to stop with these madness. Sacrificial lamb or whichever other animal is deemed camera comfortable enough to carry out this thankless and (as is the case for Nika) humiliating task.