RIP Paul the Psychic Octopus: The Football oracle dead at 2 and a half
Recently the news of Paul the Psychic Octopus’s death started circling the media. It seems the football winner predicting octopus was found dead by his keepers. Paul had become famous over this summer’s FIFA World Cup in South Africa, because of his ability
to pick the winner of forthcoming matches. There was mystery surrounding the death of the tentacled oracle though. Conspiracy theories have started to come to light from the director of a new film about to be released about Paul, who felt there might have
been some foul play involved. Whatever the case, this recently deceased octopus captured the hearts and minds of football fans during the World Cup and he will be sorely missed.
Paul the Octopus was said to have hatched in January of 2008 and lived at the Sea Life Centre in Oberhausen, Germany. The keepers at the Sea Life Centre started to test his predicting abilities during the UEFA Euro 2008 tournament. During Euro 2008, Paul
correctly predicted the outcome of 4 out of the 6 matches that he judged. His abilities were put to the test again during the World Cup this year and he managed to correctly pick the winner for all of Germany’s wins and also picked the winner of the final
correctly. He picked the winner of all seven of Germany’s matches and even picked Serbia to win against Germany in the group stage of the tournament. In the final he correctly picked Spain to win over the Netherlands. His ability to correctly predict the winner
of so many matches made him instantly famous all over the world and especially in Germany and UK.
He also made some enemies because disgruntled fans and coaches of teams he did not pick wanted to cook him and eat him. But he survived all death threats and his owners and keepers retired the famous prophet after the World Cup. A lot of mathematicians and
statisticians analysed the results of the octopus and determined that his results were no better than a coin toss. Others looked into possible biases and tricks but the interesting aspect of it all was that the octopus predicted the results before the matches,
so even the keepers could not have known. It could have been that he found the stripes of one flag better or the fact that the food in one tank was slightly different from the food in the other tank. People also maintained that it was pure chance that he correctly
picked so many winners and it was nothing more than that.
The strangeness of this story does not end because Paul the Octopus’s life and predicting abilities are being made into an international film by a Chinese director named Jiang Xiao. Jiang claims that Paul had died three months ago and that keepers had replaced
him with another octopus in order to keep the media storm alive. She said that she was 60-70% sure of this fact. Now it is interesting to think why would the keepers keep him alive; it could have been for revenues from football fans to the Sea Life Centre
or it could have been to keep the Centre in the media’s light for as long as possible. The director claimed that Paul had died on the 9th of July, two days before the World Cup final. Her claims were met with surprise and bafflement by the aquarium
personnel.
It seems sports fans are fascinated by anything that they feel can reveal the outcome of a match to them. Most of the time, barring fixed matches, any sort of pre-game prediction is 100% up to chance. No one has ever been proven to have psychic abilities
and it is even less likely that an animal has the ability. Still the fact that Paul had such a stellar record is cause to wonder about how it was possible. With the death of the great psychic creature, we may never know. All we have now is a summer of predictions
and possibly a movie about Paul the Octopus that may become a huge hit if all the fans of football and fans of match predicting octopuses go to watch it.
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