Back in April we suggested Aquariums could be great places to list as nearby attractions to add to your HomeForHome home description, and we mentioned a few well known aquariums from around the globe. Well, as the 2010 FIFA World Cup is coming to an end, there’s an aquarium that has drawn the attention of the world to one of its inhabitants: Paul the “Psychic Octopus”.

Image by Allie_Caulfield (flickr)

Paul is a common octopus living in SEA LIFE Oberhausen (in April we mentioned SEA LIFE Berlin but we really didn’t know about this famous creature). Paul seems to have the ability to predict the winner of football matches. Yes, you read correctly, the octopus can tell ahead which team will be victorious. This is how it works: Two plastic containers are presented to Paul, both have food inside and the only difference between them is the flag shown in the front. The tentacled psychic takes a moment and then decides to go for one of the containers to have his lunch and the container’s flag is taken as the flag of the winner. If you are thinking “he’s probably trained to choose the German flag” you are not correct, his last prediction was that Spain would beat Germany in the semi-final and he got it right.

A few facts about Paul:

1. Paul is British, he was born in Weymouth SEA LIFE Park and moved to his current home in 2006.
2. He is also known as das Krakenorakel (German), el Pulpo Paul (Spanish) and the Oracle Octopus.
3. He became a celebrity after predicting correctly the result of all of Germany’s matches in the current edition of the FIFA World Cup.
4. He seems to have improved his “technique” because in 2008 during the UEFA European Championship he failed in two predictions out of the six he made, but during the 2010 FIFA World Cup he made no mistakes.
5. He is a media and Internet sensation, he has made it to appear in the BBC, CNN, and thousands of TV channels worldwide. He is in the top ten trends in Twitter and has both fan and enemy pages in Facebook, the last mainly from defeated teams.

Do you want to meet Paul?

If you are interested in meeting Paul during your next home exchange vacation, you should probably hurry because apparently there are a few offers to buy the tentacled sensation and a few threatening cooking recipes in the countries that he didn’t select. Paul resides now in Oberhausen, a city in Nordrhein-Westfalen, also known for having the largest shopping mall in Germany: CentrO.  If you prefer to wait till the media forgets about Paul to arrange your home exchange, then a good time to visit him would be 5 -10 May 2011, during the 57th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen.

During the weekend we will find out if his latest predictions were correct: he chose Germany as the winner of the third-place match and Spain as the World Cup winner in Sunday’s match against the Netherlands.