Animals vs. Machines: What is better at predicting World Cup results?

The World Cup - where 32 teams meet from around the globe for a two-stage tournament involving a round-robin group stage and a single-game knockout stage - is notoriously difficult to predict. Many of these teams have no recent history against one another to draw from and other factors, such as climate and time zone, can create unseen advantages for presumed underdogs.

With that in mind, it almost make sense to delegate the thankless task of predicting winners to non-human entities: animals and computers. In 2010 we had Paul The Octopus, who was surprisingly accurate in his predictions and correctly selected Spain as champion.

Unfortunately, Paul died of natural causes shortly after the end of that tournament, but 2014 has a host of wildlife oracles vying to replace him in the hearts and minds of soccer fans all over the world.

And they're not alone: sites like fivethirtyeight.com, as well as Microsoft's answer to Siri named Cortana, are also trying their luck at using statistical models to create mathematically accurate predictions.

So who can you trust to predict the future of the world's most-watched sporting event? Meet the candidates:

Nelly The Elephant

Nelly is just one of many German successors to Paul, including an armadillo named Norman (pictured above) and an assortment of turtles, penguins and otters, but Nelly has one distinct advantage: a 30-for-33 record of correct predictions since 2006.

Nelly, who predicts results by kicking a soccer ball into one of two adjacent nets, faltered during the group stage of 2014, predicting Germany would lose to the United States and Spain would emerge victorious against Chile. It might be difficult to forget those early misses and trust Nelly's trunk going forward.

Nelly's latest prediction: a German victory over France in the quarterfinals.

Flopsy The Kangaroo

It's only fitting the nation that gave us the Socceroos would choose a kangaroo as its primary predictor. Enter Flopsy, whose Twitter account @predictaroo reached 11,000 followers on July 1 and is growing strong.

Flopsy's group-stage predictions primarily concerned her home nation of Australia, with mixed results. She made a bold (and incorrect) prediction of a victory over the Netherlands but was correct about Australia's loss to Spain.

Flopsy makes her predictions by selecting one of two food bowls placed next to the flags of the nations involved. She is going head-to-head against Nelly in the quarterfinals, selecting France to eliminate Germany.

Shaheen The Camel

The United Arab Emirates don't have a team in the World Cup, but they do have a furry World Cup predictor by the name of Shaheen.

Shaheen's methodology is simple: whichever flag sign he touches first will win. He had a 6-4 record early in the tournament and incorrectly predicted a Chile victory over Brazil in the round of 16, but the rest of his knockout stage predictions have proven accurate.

Shaheen selected Brazil and France as the two teams to advance from Friday's quarterfinal matches.

And for something a little different, Shaheen even settled the debate over who is the most notorious biter in sports: Luis Suarez or Mike Tyson. Naturally, Shaheen went with the repeat offender.

Fivethirtyeight.com

Stat-heavy analysis site fivethirtyeight.com doesn't have a mascot kicking a soccer ball or chewing on a flag sign for its prediction. What it has is numbers - lots of numbers.

The site's prediction model relies heavily on ESPN's Soccer Power Index, which assigns numerical ratings to teams and players based on past opponents and results.

As a result, fivethirtyeight's predictions leaned heavily on past favorites and missed surprising underdog stories like Costa Rica's Group D triumph. It assumed the Ivory Coast would advance out of Group C instead of Greece and suggested Bosnia-Herzegovina was the second-best team in Group F.

Going forward, fivethirtyeight is confident about Brazil, Argentina and the Netherlands advancing to the semifinals, while Germany-France is a 53-47 percent coin-flip.

Microsoft's Cortana

Computer giant Microsoft made the shrewd decision to avoid the chaos of the group stage before unleashing the predicting power of Cortana: the company's answer to Apple's Siri. Cortana relies on Microsoft's Bing prediction engine, explained here.

It didn't take long for Cortana to become the hottest commodity on the prediction market. She correctly predicted all eight round of 16 results, leaving many excited to hear her quarterfinal selections.

Cortana has yet to offer predictions for Saturday's games, but if Germany and Brazil advance on Friday, her record will improve to 10-0. Take that, animal kingdom.