URL/News: 'Psychic' octopus predicts World Cup win for Germany

angus

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An octopus whose owners claim that it has psychic powers has 'predicted' that Germany will defeat England in the World Cup.

'Psychic' octopus predicts Germany victory over England

Allegedly, the octopus correctly predicted 80% of the results in the 2008 European Championship. The article includes film of Paul the octopus (a rather handsome specimen, if I'm any judge) making his pick.
 
URL/News: 'Psychic' octopus predicts World Cup win for Germany

Thanks angus - agree, impressive specimen. FYI this is also posted in the ceph news feeds forum, and I tweeted the story as well! (follow us @cephs)...
 
I think he is...I read an article saying Paul was born in 2006 in England. Presumably if they know the date of birth he was born in captivity. What's the life expectancy for this species in captivity?
 
I was reading an article that said he was raised from an egg in that aquarium. It was in an explanation to Peta as to why he couldln't be returned to the wild. He's always had his food delivered to him.

Paul doesn't exactly look like a Giant Pacific Octopus - could he be a vulgaris.

I hear he's going to predict the final game, even though Germany is not playing.

Nancy
 
They call it a common which should be vulgaris but it is awfully small (especially if it is 2 - in itself odd). Since vulgaris is a small egg species I really wonder about the info given on the animal (it does look like a vulgaris but my guess would be 6 months old).
 
I assume you mean from a hatchling since this is the most kept and studies species in the non-hobby world. The last I could find on pelagic hatchlings showed success with a very tiny number (vulgaris was one of the two species mentioned in articles) but the information on the web about this one varies too much to have a clue.
 
Paul's information on Wikipedia keeps being updated. He is a vulgaris, born in 2008, supposedly raised from an egg.
We need to contact Paul's Sea Life Aquarium and find out more how he was born and raised. I suppose that will be easier to do on Monday, when all of this World Cup excitement is over.

And Paul did predict today's game correctly, too!

Nancy
 

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