Female octopus Regina passes by the Ghanaian national flag during an oracle event at Sea Life Aquarium in Berlin, June 20, 2014 on the eve of the match Germany vs Ghana at the FIFA World Championship 2014 in Brazil. Photo: AFP
Ghana is going to win the world cup match against Germany on Saturday – according to Regina the octopus. On June 20 the cephalopod predicted a win for the African team in Berlin’s sea world aquarium.
Regina again basked in the media spotlight after last week predicting correctly that Germany would beat Portugal.
Expectations were high of Regina’s oracle powers after her predecessor, Paul, an octopus living in an aquarium at Oberhausen’s Sea Life Center, picked the right winner in 12 out of 14 matches during the last cup in South Africa.
“Well it all started four years again the town of Oberhausen with Paul (the octopus), the possibly most famous octopus in the world who manages to correctly predict eight games during the world cup 2010,” Martin Hansel, head keeper at the aquarium told Reuters. “So it seemed obvious to use those special octopus skills and that is why we built our oracle, the board with the goal holes. We are trying to do it with our octopus.”
Two-year old Paul, who has since died, became a celebrity among football fans in 2010, with newspapers splashing his predictions across their front pages and television stations interrupting their programming to go live to his tank.
The octopus, considered by some to be the most intelligent of all invertebrates, got the choice of picking food from two different transparent containers lowered into her tank — one with a German flag on it and one with Ghana’s flag. Regina measures about 50 centimetres in length.
Source: Prothom Alo
