Penguin Swims 5,000 Miles Every Year To Visit Man Who Nursed It Back To Life

10 March 2016

– This story shows the touching relationship between a penguin and the Brazilian man who rescued him from certain death.

‘I love the penguin like it’s my own child and I believe the penguin loves me’. Now the bird swims 5,000 miles every year to visit Brazilian man who nursed it back to life after he found it covered in oil and dying on a beach.

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.