Octopus Predicts Spain Will Win World Cup

So go call your bookie

By Kevin Spak, Newser Staff

Posted Jul 9, 2010 6:48 AM CDT

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Octopus Predicts Spain Will Win World Cup — Octopus oracle Paul chooses a mussel from a glass tank marked with a Spanish flag, next to a box with a flag of Holland, in the SeaLife Aquarium in Oberhausen, Germany, Friday, July 9, 2010. (AP Photo/dapd, Roberto Pfeil)

It's official: Spain is going to win the World Cup. Paul the Octopus has decreed it, the Daily Telegraph reports. The psychic cephalopod is 6 for 6 this World Cup, and went 4 for 5 in Euro 2008, missing only when he predicted his beloved Germans to defeat Spain in the finals. He suffered from no such sentimentality this year, predicting, correctly, the Germans' downfall.

Before each game, Paul's handlers give him two boxes full of food, each marked with one team's national flag. Whichever one Paul opens first is considered his "prediction." But Germans have soured on the spectacle since he predicted their team's defeat. "I am concerned for the octopus," joked Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luiz Rodriguez Zapatero. "I am thinking of sending him a protective team." Thing is, he might need one. Click here to read why.
(More octopus stories.)

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