Octopus Paul tips Spain to win World Cup
Updated on 09 July 2010
The world's most successful World Cup pundit, Paul the psychic octopus, chooses Spain to overcome Holland in Sunday's World Cup final.
He's been right about every World Cup prediction he's made so far - and today Paul the octopus backed Spain to lift the World Cup at the end of Sunday's final.
Paul, who lives at the Sea Life aquarium in Oberhausen, Germany, makes his selection by choosing a mussel from one of two boxes offered to him at the bottom of his tank. Today he took less than ten minutes to open the box with the Spanish flag.
Paul began his forecasting career at the 2008 European football championships, but his patriotism got the better of him in the final, when he wrongly predicted that Germany would beat Spain.
This time round he made no such mistake, bravely - and correctly - choosing Spain to win this week's semi-final clash between the two teams.
"We had some e-mails and calls after that, but no threats," said the Sea Life spokeswoman, Anna Pothmann.
"We didn't take it seriously. It like a bit of fun for him and for us. He has nine brains - one in his body and one in each of his tentacles - so he likes to play games and have challenges."
The boxes containing the mussels have holes in them, so Paul can smell the contents.
But the time it takes him to choose varies from game to game. It took him 65 minutes to choose the winner of the Germany-Ghana group match (Germany scraped home 1-0), but his average time is about the ten minutes he took today.
Unlike his selection of Spain to win the final, when he went straight to the Spanish box, he was more uncertain about the third place play-off game between Germany and Uruguay.
Paul began by planting himself on top of the Uruguay box, but then - to the delight of his fellow country-species - he slid across to the German box, whipped off the cover and took out the mussel.
"Perhaps it means that Uruguay will do better in the first half, but Germany will win in the end," suggested Anna Pothmann.
In fact Paul is not really German at all. He was born two and a half years ago at the Sea Life Centre in Weymouth.
But perhaps - after successfully predicting that Germany would beat England earlier in the tournament - he'd prefer us not to mention that.
*Do you have a psychic animal who's been predicting the World Cup results? If so, please send us details - and pictures - and we'll give them a run on the website: news@channel4.com
