We've heard of cats that can predict deaths and toads that can predict earthquakes, but none of these animals had the fate of a nation sitting squarely on its (many) shoulders like Paul, the World Cup-predicting octopus.
This seemingly psychic cephalopod predicted the winner of this year’s World Cup, Spain, as well as the winners of all six German matches before that. In case you’re wondering, the odds of you doing that are 1 in 128.
So what’s Paul’s story? Is he fixing these matches? Some sort of time-traveling mollusk that stole Biff’s idea from Back to the Future 2? Or is he just really, really lucky?
I called Alan Peters, invertebrate curator at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo, to get his take on Paul’s football prowess. He told me:
"Particularly among invertebrates, octopi are very intelligent, but that intelligence can be defined in different ways."
Like say... picking the winning teams for a worldwide soccer tournament?
"Predictive power I don’t think is part of that," he added.
Peters notes that octopi are visually oriented and can be trained and stimulated with food and objects. And while Paul was presented with two identical boxes containing mussels, since both boxes contained food, it couldn’t have been the deciding factor.
"Maybe there’s some similarities on all the flags that the octopus chose," he said. "You could really dig into this deep if you wanted to tease out why this happened."
Yes, the flags! Each time, the researchers put the German flag on one box, and the flag of their opponent on the other (except for the final). Octopi, Peters said, are able to detect differences in shapes and patterns, as well as colors.
"They don’t see color like we do but they can tell the differences between different colors, said Peters. "It’s just that their brain doesn’t say ‘red here and yellow there,’ it says 'these two things are different.'"
So let’s take a look at each of the matches:
First stage
Germany vs. Australia (Paul’s pick: Germany). The Australian flag, with is small Union Jack and field of blue, looks very different from Germany’s black, red and yellow bars.
Germany vs. Serbia (Paul’s pick: Serbia). The Serbian flag has different colors than the German one, but almost an identical three-bar pattern.
Germany vs. Ghana (Paul’s pick: Germany). Both flags have similar patterns and colors, so maybe Paul just went with his gut on this one.
Round of 16
Germany vs. England (Paul’s pick: Germany). Not even close. Both in the game (4-1 Germany) and in the flag colors and design.
Quarterfinals
Germany vs. Argentina (Paul’s pick: Germany). Same three bar pattern, but very different colors.
Semifinals
Germany vs. Spain (Paul’s pick: Spain). Another close call. The Spanish and German flags are very similar in color and pattern. Paul must have had an inside tip on this game.
Final
Spain vs. Netherlands (Paul’s pick: Spain). Again, the Spanish flag looks a lot like Germany’s. Paul’s prescience is celebrated all over Spain.
Ok, so I don’t know if I’m convinced flag colors or patterns had anything to do with it.
But there has to be some sort of explanation, right? Well, according to Peters, it could be something people often do when training animals; they inadvertently make movements or sounds that an animal uses as stimuli. But without a control environment, it would be hard to determine what that cue was in this case, he said.
Still, maybe the octopus just knows, you know?
"I don't think so," Peters said. "But I mean, how accurate are we in picking winners?"
So maybe it was just random luck. Of course, that doesn’t mean these animals aren’t intelligent in ways we have yet to fully understand.
"And to me that’s what’s cool about it. You start to realize they are in a different world, and live in a different world, and interact with it differently than us," he said. "And then we try to impose our world on it. So they’re always sort of surprising us."
And next time I’m in Vegas, I’m bringing an octopus (but not a parakeet).
Image: AP Photo; Graphic: FIFA
Tags: Animal Behavior, Animals, Marine Life, Sports, Video
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