Vegetarian Star

Paul, the psychic Octopus is retiring from his career of predicting sports games, leaving the way for Miss Cleo to put on her bikini and jump in the tank instead.

The Octopus who correctly predicted Spain winning the World Cup over the Netherlands has almost a 100% success rate at guessing the outcome of sporting events, especially when it comes to Germany. Paul would be presented two boxes of food displaying the nation’s flags. Whichever box he chose to eat from was usually the winner of the game. When his recent prediction put Germany on the losing side, fans threatened to make paella out of him. Just imagine what they’d do to the referees.

PETA has called for his release from the Aquarium Sea Life Centre in Oberhausen, Germany, citing the confined conditions as unhealthy for the sea creature.

“No animal deserves to be confined to a tiny tank and we’re hoping that Paul’s popularity, or in Germany notoriety, will cause people to think a little bit more about the inner lives of octopuses,” a representative from the group said.

We may not know much about the “inner lives” of octopuses, as much as we know about Britney Spear‘s life, but scientists do have information on the octopus’s cognitive skills and intelligence. They can, for example, recognize shapes, regardless of the orientation the shape is in. And these guys don’t need GPS. After putting them in a tank filled with different landmarks, the octopuses quickly learned to navigate their way to find the quickest route to a hidden exit in the tank.

Octopuses may also be classified as righties or lefties, as one experimenter suggested they may prefer to look with their left or right eyes.

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