An octopus called Paul in a German acquarium has so far made clinical predicitons on Football match results involving Germany and other teams.The handler of this octopus lowers two boxes containing mussels(another invertibrate animal) to be consumed by the octopus as food.Each box will also have the national flag of the two teams.which ever box the octopus opens first is the team predicted to win. The astonishing fact is that Paul has chosen the winner of all the six matches where Germany were involved in FIFA 2010.It has predicted even Germany's loss to Serbia in the league stage.Germany's win over England and Argentina were also precisely predicted by the octopus.The semi final resluts were also rightly predicted by Paul.A win for spain was predicted by the two year old octopus.So far Paul predicted only matches involving Germany.On Saturday it is going to predict the outcome of Sundays FIFA final.What is mystifying is that six out of six times the octopus predictions were right.Even the proabability theory and binomial distribution is not in agreement with this strange phenemenon.How could this happen?The octopus is interested only in eating the mussels kept in the box.In the process,the first box opened by it is taken as it's pick or prediction.Surprisingly it has been right on all six occassions so far.
Octupuses belong to the cephalopod order and are considered to be generally intelligent compared to other invertebrates(lower animals).But their intelligence is debated by biologists world over.However octopuses are peculiar in many respects.Even their death is genetically programmed and have a very short life span.Experiments have proved they have short term and long term memory.Another striking thing is the complex nervous sytem of octopuses.Laboratory experiments have proved that they can be trained to distinguish different patterns and shapes.In otherwords octopuses posess observational skills and does learn through observations.Octopuses have the rare distinction of being extended protection against animal cruelty in some countries.Probably Octopus could be the only invertebrate animal to enjoy this status.All said and done the octopus intellegince is a controversial topic.But its learning capacity,exceptional navigational ability and its marauding techniques have been accepted by all.However the cephalopod brain is an enigma till date.Octopus is a mollusc,a lower group animal but has exceptional observational learning powers which is normally associated with higher vertebrate animals.Some others believe their intellegince is an overstatement.But some others feel they do posess abnormal cognition.One undeniable fact is that octopus brains are huge for an invertibrate.The Bulgarian Intelligence Service involved in a special operation was once nicknamed 'Octopus'.Biologists have proved over the years through experiments their power to learn.A trained octopus can identify a rectangle,no matter what is its dimension.But many of these so called experiments were not scrutinised.
In the present case it is believed all the six times the octopus opened the box on its right side and by a strange coincidence all the six predictions were right.But the same octopus has made a wrong prediction during the 2008 Euro cup match between Germany and Spain.Then it predicted a win for Germany ,but Germany lost the match.But even during the 2008 Euro cup 5 out of 6 predictions of the octopus were correct.I feel the handlers of this octopus has a say in the predicitons of Paul.These persons have knowledge about the strength, weaknesses and the current form of each teams and tries to influence the octopus selection.There is a very strong possibility of this since octopuses can learn by observation.
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