A microbiologist is using E. coli (yes, the bacteria) to predict the Euro 2024 tournament

If you search the internet hard enough, you can probably find just about any kind of living organism making some sort of sports prediction.

Giraffes, bears, elephants, camels. Of course, our friends from the pet department like dogs and cats. Even meerkats successfully predicted three straight England World Cup wins last year.

One thing you probably haven’t heard of making a prediction, though, is bacteria. Until now. One microbiologist is using E. coli to make Euro 2024 picks. And while I’m not suggesting anyone tail the bacteria, this clip from Reuters is incredibly fascinating.

Can E. coli bacteria predict Euro 2024 results? Ahead of the upcoming European Football Championship, microbiologist Markus Egert believes that his little organisms will become the new trend for predicting soccer results pic.twitter.com/wwi29OU58o

— Reuters (@Reuters) June 4, 2024

Markus Egert was able to grow some germs in a Petri dish designed to resemble a soccer pitch, with a flag for each opposing team on opposite ends. He then uses the distribution of colonies from the germs in each team’s penalty area to predict which side will score the most goals.

In the example from the video, the bacteria picked Germany to win the tournament opener against Scotland, which is a solid pick for the -375 favorites in that match.

Germany has the third best odds to win the entire tournament behind England (+300) and France (+350). Knowing how bad most humans are at betting, I can’t imagine the bacteria will be much worse.