Paul the Octopus

Paul the Octopus

Paul, next to a football boot with the German flag colours, in his tank
Other name(s)	Paul Oktopus, Die Krake Paul
Species	Octopus vulgaris
Sex	Male
Hatched	26 January 2008 Weymouth, England
Died	26 October 2010 (aged 2) Oberhausen, Germany
Known for	Predicting results of football matches
Owner	Sea Life Centres
Named after	Der Tintenfisch Paul Oktopus – poem by Boy Lornsen

Paul the Octopus (26 January 2008 – 26 October 2010) was a common octopus which was purportedly used to predict the results of association football matches. Accurate predictions in the 2010 World Cup brought it worldwide attention as an animal oracle.

During divinations, Paul's keepers would present him with two boxes containing food. The boxes were identical except that they were decorated with the different team flags of the competitors in an upcoming football match. Whichever box Paul ate from first was considered his prediction for which team would win the match.

His keepers at the Sea Life Centre in Oberhausen, Germany, mainly tasked him with predicting the outcomes of international matches in which the German national football team was playing. Paul correctly chose the winning team in four of Germany's six Euro 2008 matches, and all seven of their matches in the 2010 World Cup—including Germany's third place play-off win over Uruguay on 10 July. At that point, it had an overall record of 11 out of 13 correct predictions: a success rate of 85%.

Aside from its predictions involving Germany, Paul also foretold Spain's win against the Netherlands in the 2010 World Cup Final by eating a mussel from the box with the Spanish flag on it.

Experts have proposed several scientific theories to explain Paul's seemingly prescient behaviour, which range from pure luck to the possibility that it was attracted to the appearance or the smell of one box over another.

Paul was hatched from an egg at the Sea Life Centre in Weymouth, England, and was then moved to a tank at one of the chain's centres at Oberhausen in Germany. Its name derives from the title of a poem by the German children's writer Boy Lornsen: Der Paul Oktopus.