Incredible: Penguin swims 5000 kms back to its Brazilian helper

Joao Pereira de Souza and the penguin

It’s an incredible story: a penguin returns yearly to its Brazilian helper, the 71 year old pensioner who five years ago, rescued it from death and nursed it back to life.

Retired bricklayer and part time fisherman Joao Pereira de Souza, 71, from an island village just outside Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, discovered the tiny penguin languishing on rocks in 2011.

The helpless creature was starving and covered in oil but Mr de Souza took him in and nursed him back to health, naming the South American Magellanic penguin Dindim.

the penguin plays on the beach

Joao Pereira de Souza: I treat it like my child

It took him a week just to clean the sticky black residue from the bird’s feathers.
When Dindim was well again Mr de Souza released him back into the sea, never expecting to see his new friend again.

He was astonished when, just a few months later, the penguin returned to the island where he recognised Mr de Souza and returned home with him.
Now, Dindim spends eight months of the year with Mr de Souza and spends the rest of his time breeding off the coast of Argentina and Chile.

The flightless bird is believed to swim around 5,000 miles everytime he returns to Mr de Souza.
‘I love the penguin like it’s my own child and I believe the penguin loves me,’ Mr Pereira de Souza told Globo TV.


See the video here of the touching relationship here: