THE sea lions at Pleasurewood Hills are giving Derren Brown a run for his money by predicting the Euromillions lottery numbers in their very own lucky dip.

THE sea lions at Pleasurewood Hills are giving Derren Brown a run for his money by predicting the Euromillions lottery numbers in their very own lucky dip.

While Mr Brown is rumoured to have used a split screen - or perhaps ants trained to form numbers- to “predict” the result, sea lions Marcus and Claude use their intuition to pick a numbered ball from their pool, display it on their nose and throw it to their trainer.

Sea lion Marcus, 20, might be expecting a fishy slice of the action if the theme park syndicate wins the �85m jackpot, but six-year-old Claude is too young to gamble.

The park opens in April so trainer Tracy Jacobs is using the lottery game to get the sea lions prepared for tricks including ball balancing, jumps and somersaults.

Miss Jacobs, form Lowestoft, said: “Marcus and Claude had a great time helping us to pick out our numbers and it added an extra bit of excitement to our training session.

“Who knows, maybe they felt something lucky in their whiskers when they were picking the balls, or maybe they just picked the one they most liked the colour of? Either way, it was a fun way of picking the numbers.”

The five lucky numbers chosen by the sea lions are being kept secret.

A National Lottery spokesman said: “We will keep our fingers crossed that Marcus and Claude's selections prove lucky for the staff at Pleasurewood Hills.

“If we do hear that they have won then we will make sure that we put plenty of fish on ice as well as the champagne.”