A penguin has struck a highly unlikely friendship with an old Brazilian pensioner and swims 8,000 kilometers every year to visit him since he saved his life four years ago.
The South American Magellanic penguin named Dindim was found covered in oil and close to death in 2011 by a bricklayer and part-time fisherman, Joao Pereira de Souza.
The 71-year-old took the animal into his home at the shore of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, cleaned him up and fed him a fish diet. After nursing him back to health, Pereira also named the penguin Dindim.
Dindim stayed with his rescuer for 11 months, and they formed a very strong bond. But the penguin disappeared into the sea when Dindim’s coat was renewed with fresh feathers. This could have been the end of the story. However, De Souza was overjoyed to see Dindim return the following year and the following years.
“Everyone said he wouldn’t return, but he has been coming back to visit me for the past four years,” he said.
“Every year, he becomes more affectionate and seems even happier to see me. No one else is allowed to touch him. He pecks them if they do. He lays on my lap and allows me to give him showers, feed him sardines, and pick him up, ” the pensioner says about their unlikely friendship.
“I love the penguin like it’s my child, and I believe it loves me,” Pereira told Globo TV.
In a video, Pereira can be seen talking to the animal. “Dindim, there’s a guy who wants your picture. Don’t you like taking pictures?” he says. However, the penguin only looks at the older man and refuses to turn to the camera.
“I have never seen anything like this before. I think the penguin believes Joao is part of his family and probably a penguin. When he sees him, he wags his tail like a dog and honks with delight”, said Biologist Professor Markus Krajewski, who interviewed Pereira for Globo TV.
Dindim spends about eight months of the year with his human companion and the other four months breeding in his natural habitat, off the chilly Patagonia coasts of Argentina and Chile.
“He arrives in June and leaves to go home in February,” Pereira said.
To commute between his old and his new home, the penguin has to travel a distance of 8,000km twice a year.
“I’m flattered Dindim is happy to exchange his home with thousands of other penguins every year to find his way here to spend one-to-one time with me,” Pereira said.
However sweet this relationship may be, environmentalists warn that more and more oceanic animals are found washed up on the beaches of Brazil. For example, while hundreds of Magellanic penguins are known to migrate thousands of kilometers north in search of food naturally, an increasing number of them end up on the shore, where strong oceanic currents carry them from the Falkland region.
Professor David Zee, an oceanographer from Rio de Janeiro’s State University, traces this back partly to global climatic changes.
