This is the heartwarming story of the loving relationship between man and penguin.
It begins in Brazil, with 71-year-old retired bricklayer Joao Pereira de Souza. One day when working he found Dindim, a South American Magallanic penguin close to death.
He was covered in oil and looked like he had no hope. Joao managed to nurse him back to health and tried to release him back into the wild, but he found that Dindim didn’t want to leave.Dindim wanted to stay with him, and did for a bit before eventually swimming off to the horizon.
To Joao’s surprise, Dindim came back the following year to visit him, and the next year, and all the years following.
Here you can see a video of them reuniting:
“Everyone said he wouldn’t return but he has been coming back to visit me for the past four years”
“I love the penguin like it’s my own child and I believe the penguin loves me,” Joao 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.”
“He stayed with me for 11 months and then…he disappeared”
“I love the penguin like it’s my own child and I believe the penguin loves me. When he sees him he wags his tail like a dog and honks with delight”
“No one else is allowed to touch him. He pecks them if they do”
“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 Professor Krajewski