Beyond Precious: Penguin Swims 5,000 MILES Every Year For Reunion With Man Who Saved His Life

Teresa Neumann : Mar 10, 2016
Alison Lynch – Metro News, UK

Man and beast: The Lord God made them all.

(Brazil)—There are many heartwarming tales of friendships between humans and animals, but this one is truly extraordinary. (Photo: TV Globo)

In 2011, Joao Pereira de Souza, now 71, rescued a tiny penguin he found lying on the beach covered in oil. He named him Dindim (also called Jinjing). 

The retired bricklayer and part-time fisherman tenderly removed the oil from the penguin's feathers and nurtured him back to health. According to multiple reports, when he tried to release the penguin back into the ocean, he refused to leave, following Pereira de Souza back home. 

Finally Dindim did leave—to breed in waters thousands of miles away. But the devoted penguin still returns to Brazil to spend the remaining eight months of the year with the man who saved him. 

Joao told Globo TV: "I love the penguin like it's my own child and I believe the penguin loves me. No one else is allowed to touch him. He pecks them if they do... He arrives [every year] in June and leaves to go home in February and every year he becomes more affectionate as he appears even happier to see me." (Photo: TV Globo)

Biologist Professor Krajewski, who was quoted as saying he's never seen anything like it, said that when Dindim sees Joao he "wags his tail like a dog and honks with delight." 

In the words of Louis Armstrong, "And I say to myself, ‘What a wonderful world.'"