Meet the Magellanic penguin named Dindim, who has tirelessly swum thousands of kilometers away from his ‘home’ to spend time with his buddy, fisherman Joao.
Spending most of the year on the Patagonian coast of South America, as well as Argentina, Chile, and the Falkland Islands, Magellanic penguins sometimes travel as far as Brazil in search of food.
But during the summer of 2011, the 71-year-old Joao Pereira de Souza, while fishing on an island, found one of these penguins covered in oil and starving.
Being a good man he is, he took the penguin home, cleaning and feeding him until he recovered completely.
When he decided to let him back in the ocean, Joao realized that the penguin did not want to leave…
“He wouldn’t leave, he stayed with me for 11 months, and then just after he changed his coat with new feathers, he disappeared, “Joao told The Independent.
“Everyone said he wouldn’t return, but he has been coming back to visit me for the past four years. He arrives in June and leaves to go home in February, and every year he becomes more affectionate as he appears even happier to see me,” he continued.
“I have never seen anything like this before,” Biologist Joao Paulo Krajewski said. “I think the penguin believes Joao is part of his family and probably a penguin as well. When he sees him, he wags his tail like a dog and honks with delight.”
“Because penguins are usually very loyal to their pair and breeding site, where they spend the summer, they tend to come back to the same place every year,” Krajewski told CNN.
In Brazil, It’s prohibited to keep wild animals as pets, but in this instance, the authorities have made an exception since Dindim is free to leave whenever he wants.
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