The Penguin Returns. No, it isn’t a Batman movie, just a heartwarming story of a penguin that makes an incredibly long swim each year to reunite with the fisherman that saved its life.
This may or may not be a science story, but it’s definitely heartwarming, and one that gives some insight into animal relationships. Meet Dindim the penguin.
Late in 2011, Dindim was laying on a beach in Brazil covered in oil. He was starving and dying from the petroleum weighing down his feathers. Local fisherman Joao Pereira de Souza, 71, found him, cleaned him up, fed him and nursed him back to health. Dindim was so grateful that he did not leave.
“He stayed with me for 11 months and then just after he changed his coat with new feathers he disappeared,” de Souza said in an interview. And now each year, the penguin returns to visit his friend.
Dindim is a South American Magellanic penguin that usually breeds off the Patagonian coasts of Argentina and Chile, anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 miles away. In this case, Dindim probably heads there to breed, but returns to stay with de Souza eight months a year at the fishing village.
“I have never seen anything like this before. I think the penguin believes Joao is part of his family and probably a penguin as well,” said biologist Joao Paulo Krajewski. “When he sees him he wags his tail like a dog and honks with delight.”
“I love the penguin like it’s my own child and I believe the penguin loves me,” de Souza told Globo TV. “No one else is allowed to touch him. He pecks them if they do. He lays on my lap, lets me give him showers, allows me to feed him sardines and to pick him up.”
Source: The Independent
