As one can imagine, those who predict, and place odds and bets on the World Cup semifinals and final winners are extremely busy these days.
Serious fans and serious gamblers anxiously seek and mull and use the predictions and odds provided by reputable and not-so-reputable experts, odds makers and bookmakers.
Millions–probably billions–will be won and lost by the time the last goal of the 2010 World Cup is kicked. The vast majority of prognosticators–albeit assisted by computers and other tools–are human.
However, one of the most famous prognosticators is turning out to be a cephalopod: Paul the German octopus.
Paul, an English-born octopus (I don’t know how he got his German citizenship), resides in an aquarium in Oberhausen, Germany.
He has become an instant world-wide celebrity by having correctly predicted all five of Germany’s 2010 World Cup matches so far.
According to Sports Untapped, Paul predicts the winner of the games by picking out, and eating, a mussel out of two plastic containers let down in his aquarium. One of the containers has the German flag on it and the other the flag of the opposing team. You guessed it, the flag on the container from which the sacrificial mussel comes represents the predicted winner.
In the very last prediction, Paul picked and ate the German mussel over the Argentinean one and, of course, Germany won. (See the video above)
However, as with every celebrity, a bit of a controversy has arisen around Paul the Octopus’ talents.
Apparently over the weekend, a photo started circulating showing that Paul had picked Spain over Germany for the World Cup semifinal match. The photo shows Paul wrapping its tentacles over the container with the Spanish flag. It is not clear to this naked eye whether Paul had already enjoyed his Spanish mussel, or is about to.
Sheer angst descended on the German fans until the photo was deemed to be a fake, since the usual You Tube evidence of Paul’s meal has not been published.
Apparently, the troublemakers used the photo of Paul feasting on the Serbia mussel–correctly predicting Serbia’s win over Germany in the First Stage–and replaced the Serbian flag with the Spanish flag.
Paul’s official meal, and prognostication, for the Germany-Spain semifinal has not been served yet.
