Adorable penguin swims 5,000 miles every year to visit man who saved him
The story of a penguin that swims thousands of miles every year to visit his rescuer is melting hearts all over the Internet.
In 2011, a Brazilian man from an island village near Rio de Janeiro stumbled upon a small penguin that was starving and covered in oil.
Joao Pereira de Souza, a 71-year-old retired bricklayer and part time fisherman, took it home and nursed it back to health before setting it free back in the wild.
See more in the gallery below:
To his surprise the penguin returned to visit him just a few months later. Dindim, as Pereira de Souza named him, now spends eight months of the year with him before returning to mate off the coast of Argentina and Chile.
"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 reportedly told Globo TV. "I love the penguin like it's my own child and I believe the penguin loves me."
Watch the heart-melting video:
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