Ophira the Octopus predicts Germany will beat Canada in Berlin on Sunday. (Photo by Anjali Nayar)
BERLIN - This morning eight octopuses at aquariums across Germany made their predictions for the winner of Sunday's Germany vs. Canada game. Three octopuses picked Germany, two picked Canada and the last three predicted a draw.
Berlin's contender, a six-month-old Ophira, picked the host team.
She had an athletic warm-up, but come game time, Ophira the octopus shied away from the dozen camera crews crammed around her one-metre-wide tank, and nudged herself into a clay pot.
It took some cajoling by curator Martin Hansel, to get her tentacles splayed. She suctioned her way up her tank's netting straight onto the German side of the plastic "oracle device" lowered in her tank, and engulfed the waiting sardine.
A couple seconds later, she shimmied across the plastic box and found Canada's sardine. But it was too late. The oracle-in-training had spoken.
"[Ophira] picked Germany, of course" says Charlotte Rendel, a visitor to the aquarium.
It's not the first time Germany's aquariums have had football fever. For years the Sea Life aquarium chain has hosted football games between its rays, Japanese spider crabs and crayfish (separately, thank goodness), with real goals and a ball filled with food.
"The crayfish games were a bit chaotic because they really go after it," Hansel admitted. "We probably needed a referee because there were a lot of fouls."
But last year the chain made international headlines (and brought in truckloads of tourists), when Paul, a common octopus at the chain's aquarium in Oberhausen, Western Germany, correctly predicted the winners of eight World Cup games in a row. The odds of that are 251:1.
When Paul picked Spain over Netherlands in the final match, he was celebrated by Spanish fans around the world, while the Dutch made calamari.
Tragically, Paul died a few months after the 2010 World Cup, without an heir.
This year the Sea Life chain is putting its remaining octopuses to the test during the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup, to find Paul's successor. So on Friday morning eight cephalopods across the country started their own World Cup competition, making their first predictions for the Canada versus Germany opener. The predictions will continue at 11:00 a.m. (5:00 a.m. EDT) before each German match and octopus with the best rating will inherit Paul's title.
Numbers Count
The prediction apparatus is a transparent box, lowered into the octopus tank, modeled after the half-time game "Goal Wall," where the contestant must score through one of the holes in the goal-shaped wall.
For the octopuses, each hole (one in the lower right corner and one in the upper left corner) is decorated with the national flag of one of the opposing teams, and contains a tasty treat - in Ophira's case, a sardine.
The octopuses make their "prediction" by which hole they eat from first. On Friday, octopuses at three aquariums - Berlin, Oberhausen and Königswinter - picked the host team. Canada got two votes from Munich and Konstanz. And the last three octopuses at Timmendorfer, Hannover and Speyer predicted a tie, according to Berlin Sea Life's General Manager, Sandra Schmalzried.
Ophira, the Hebrew word for gold, was named in hopes that she would bring the German team good luck for topping the World Cup, according to Sea Life Berlin's spokesperson Nina Zerbe.
So was the game fixed or what?
A rope ladder up the left hand side of Ophira's tank probably makes it easier for her to "go left." The day before the competition, the aquarium's curator, Hansel, admitted that Ophira might be a lefty.
"She's been choosing both holes quite often, but sometimes she chooses the upper left side first," said Hansel, on Thursday before the prediction.
Not surprisingly, the German flag was in the upper left.
Whether Ophira is a true oracle like Paul remains to be said - we'll have to wait for Sunday at 18:00hrs in Germany (12:00 EDT) for that.
So Canadian fans shouldn't start firing up their frying pans just yet. But regardless of who wins, maple syrup calamari does sound pretty tasty...
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