Eyes around the world were on Germany's octopus Paul Friday as he made his biggest choice yet in the World Cup: Spain will beat the Netherlands in the final. He also favored earlier Friday that Germany will win over Uruguay in Saturday's match for third and fourth place. While Paul is no doubt the world's most famous animal oracle these days, he is facing competition. In Singapore, Mani, a World Cup-forecasting parakeet, gave a different outcome of Sunday's final match. Creeping out of his small wooden cage and choosing between two white cards – one hiding a Dutch flag, the other Spanish – the bird predicted the Netherlands will win its first World Cup championship, setting up a Mani-Paul showdown for Sunday. Paul's prescient picks in the World Cup – he has yet to declare a match wrong – have propelled him to international fame from obscurity a month ago in an aquarium in the western city of Oberhausen. TV stations in Germany, Great Britain, Taiwan and elsewhere broadcast live pictures, complete with breathless commentary, of his final decision for the tournament. Millions watched as the world-famous octopus descended upon on a tank marked with a Spanish flag, sitting for only a few minutes before grabbing a mussel and devouring it, while completely ignoring the Dutch tank – indicating a Spanish victory in Sunday's final. It was the first time he'd been tasked to pick a game in which Germany wasn't involved, as the Oberhausen Sea Life aquarium bowed to overwhelming demand to see who he would choose in the final. Paul correctly picked Germany's wins over Argentina, England, Australia and Ghana and the country's loss to Spain and Serbia. Paul first developed his abilities during the 2008 European Championship in which he picked five out of six games involving Germany correctly. But while he had only a community of local fans two years ago, his World Cup prognostications have brought him international stardom. Spain's defeat of Germany in the semifinals as said by Paul prompted many Germans to wonder about how he would taste grilled for dinner. Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero fretted about the safety of “El Pulpo Paul,” as he's known in Spain, and offered Paul protection. “I am concerned about the octopus,” Zapatero said. “I'm thinking about sending in a team to protect the octopus because obviously it was very spectacular that he should get Spain's victory right from there.” In response to hundreds of angry e-mails and death threats from disappointed German football fans who sent in recipe suggestions for the 2 1/2 year-old floppy mollusk, the aquarium actually did take extra precautions, Porwoll said. “I even told our guards and people at the entrance to keep a close look at possible for football fans coming after Paul for revenge,” Porwoll said. He added, however, that the number of love declarations the aquarium is receiving from Paul's fans far outweighed the hate mail. “People want to ask Paul about their marriage prospects, the gender of their future baby or the outcome of upcoming elections.” One reporter from Greece asked if Paul could say the end of the financial crisis and German TV stations have offered the eight-legged psychic lucrative contracts for his post-World Cup life, he said. Paul has even made waves in the business world. Gary Jenkins, an economist with London's Evolution Securities, hedged his market analysis note on Friday, conceding “unless Paul says differently.” Friday's pick is expected to be the last for Paul, who in octopus terms is a pensioner, at the grand old age of two-and-a-half. Octopuses generally live three years at the latest. The 13-year-old parakeet has become a local celebrity after its owner, M. Muniyappan, claimed Mani accurately picked the World Cup's four quarterfinal games and Spain's semifinal victory over Germany. Dutch octopus Pauline, a female octopus in Dutch captivity, has handed victory for the Netherlands in Sunday's World Cup final against Spain, contradicting Paul the “psychic” German octopus after whom she was named, her aquarium said Friday. “She chose the Netherlands,” Maaike Schroeder, spokeswoman for the Sea Life aquarium in Scheveningen in The Hague said. This was a first attempt for four-year-old Pauline, added Schroeder. In a similar method as that famously employed for Paul, two boxes – one with the Dutch flag, the other that of Spain and each with a mussel inside, were placed in Pauline's enclosure Thursday. Pauline opted for the mussel in the Dutch box for her meal.
