Psychic Octopus Sparks Controversy After Reportedly Picking Spain to Beat Germany

by Nick Coman on Mon, Jul 5, 2010 at 10:30AM

Paul, a giant octopus residing in the Sea Life Aquarium in Oberhausen, Germany, has become a legend of sorts for properly predicting each of Germany’s matches.

Sunday night, the story broke throughout the blogosphere that the creature had picked Spain over Germany in the World Cup semifinal match (as usual, by eating a mollusk out of a container marked with the country’s flag). Unlike past picks, though, no video evidence on YouTube was available to corroborate the report.

Immediately, German fans descended into a state of denial and disbelief, but perhaps for good reason. The only previous instance of Paul picking against his home team, the group stage match between between Die Mannschaft and Serbia, featured photographs that look nearly identical to those in the Spain pick reports.

The Spain picture is now believed to be a fake. Paul’s official pick can now be found here.