Paul the Octopus, Germany and a Soccer Cup

Paul the octopus was born (some two and a half years ago) in Weymouth (England) and now by profession he is kind of an oracle specialized in soccer match prediction, exclusively for Germany. Currently he lives in a German aquarium. He started predicting Germany’s matches since 2008 and so far, he has 100% accuracy. 

In the 2010 world cup, when he predicted Germany’s win over Argentina, many people laughed. How can Germany beat Argentina? Well, Argentina lost the match very badly and from that day onwards Paul is getting many death threats. Now, many people want to kill him (and some even want to eat him).

Some people had predicted that Germany would win this year’s cup based on some ‘magic number’. That number is as follows:

Brazil won the World Cup in 1994;   before that they also won in 1970.  1970 + 1994= 3964

Argentina won World Cup in 1986; before that they also won in 1978. 1978 + 1986= 3964  

Brazil won the World Cup in 2002; before that they won in 1962. 1962+ 2002= 3964 

Germany won the cup in 1990; before that they also won in 1974.  1974 + 1990= 3964  

Germany won the cup in 1954 also. So, 3964 minus 1954 = 2010 and hence Germany will win the cup since none of the other team’s data match with 2010.

So I was curious about this year’s FIFA world cup since Paul predicted that Germany would lose the match to Spain in the semi-finals. Many people, including his care taker thought this time he will go wrong. It was said that Germany has good players and Spain had no star players (personally I don’t know. My knowledge about international soccer players and teams are poor) usually I do not watch soccer matches but today I decided to watch the match live, out of curiosity.

Once again, Paul’s prediction became perfectly right and now he has become a big celebrity, who might even need some extra security.  The way he predict the winner is like this – his care taker provides same food in two square boxes marked with two flags, one being Germany's and the second being the opposite team's. The octopus predicts the winner by opening and the winner’s box and eating that food first.

For me, octopus was kind of ‘sea-spider’ since it has 8 legs and I never was comfortable with octopus. But just like spiders, they always fascinated me (But whenever I read about spiders, I read it with a little fear). Somewhat same with octopuses too. I did not really like them (so far no octopus came to my dreams as nightmare….touch wood). But just because we do not like octopuses we cannot deny that they are smart, right?

Just like a cuttlefish, an octopus too has 3 hearts. Two pumping blood to gills and one to the rest of the body. These creatures have very complex nervous system and brain functions. It is said that each arm/leg can work with its own intelligence and hence some people say an octopus has 9 brains (I am not sure about this). They have great vision and they observe very keenly and analyses well. This is one reason why many octopuses managed to escape from places where they have kept as ‘captives’. They have some 'extra sense' like cats and dogs, it seems.  I saw how Paul open that box and eat his food. 

Whatever….. Great work Mr. Paul. Keep predicting.

But won’t his predictions before a match affect the team psychologically?