thaizer.com

A giant panda at a zoo in northern Thailand has ‘predicted’ that Spain will defeat Holland in tonight’s World Cup Final. Lin Ping the panda has achieved celebrity status in Chiang Mai ever since she was born last year and the city has used the panda cub as part of a campaign to boost tourism to the region.

Yesterday, the panda was given the opportunity to drink milk from a choice of two containers each bearing the national flag of Holland and Spain. Lin Ping opted to drink from the container with the Spanish flag before overturning the container with the Dutch flag. Chiang Mai zoo has jumped on the publicity bandwagon generated by the ‘psychic’ octopus at an aquarium in Germany who has been successfully predicting the results of a number of matches during the football World Cup. A spokesman at Chiang Mai zoo said the request for Lin Ping to select a winner came via Lin Ping’s followers on social networking site, Twitter. However, the zoo says that this Thai bit of sanuk was also as a useful training exercise for the young panda.

photo from The Nation

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