Adorable
Penguin Swims 5,000 Miles Each Year to Visit the Man Who Rescued Him
By: Tex
Dworkin
- March 11, 2016
Talk
about gratitude.
How
far would you swim to reunite with the person who saved your life?
For one penguin who found himself in a sticky situation (literally),
the answer is approximately 5,000 miles.
Have
you heard about the Magellanic
Penguin and retired bricklayer in
Brazil who have struck up a unique friendship?
Joao
Pereira de Souza lives in a fishing village just outside Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil. In 2011 he found a tiny penguin lying on some rocks
at his local beach. The creature was covered in oil and close
to death.
Joao
cleaned the penguin, nursed him back to health, and named
him Dindim. Joao tried releasing the penguin, presumably
never to meet again, but Dindim wasn’t ready to leave just
yet. Joao
recalls,
“He stayed with me for 11 months and then, just after he changed
his coat with new feathers, he disappeared.”
But
that was not the last time the two would meet. So
the story goes,
over the past five years, Dindim has spent many months of the year
with Joao and some believe he spends the rest of the time
breeding off the coast of Argentina and Chile.
Joao
told Globo TV,
“I love the penguin like it’s my own child and I believe the
penguin loves me.” Apparently, no one else is permitted to touch
Dindim, besides Joao, of course. Dindim lets Joao give him showers,
feed and pick him up.
That’s quite a heartwarming story, eh?
According
to Penguin World,
the Magellanic Penguin is the only migratory, offshore-foraging
species in its genus. Some move as far north as Peru and Brazil
in winter. So a penguin hanging out at a Brazilian fishing village is
not necessarily as wild and crazy as it may sound.
I
wonder though; is having a human ‘bff’ in any way a detriment to
this wild penguin’s welfare?
We
know that there are health
and emotional benefits of human-animal interactions.
But we also know that wild animals belong in the wild and when
humans try to change that, tragedy happens.
Still,
a recent
study found that
ecotourism — which some
claim can be dangerous to animal species in general —“might
be less harmful to larger birds than previously thought because
larger animals are more likely to be able to tolerate human
disturbance.” A key finding from the
study:
“Larger birds are more tolerant of humans than smaller birds.”
Daniel
Blumstein, the study’s senior author and a member of the Institute
of the Environment and Sustainability, explained,
“This new finding flips previous recommendations about large-bodied
species being more vulnerable to the presence of humans, and shows
that large-bodied species are more tolerant.” He added, “It is
likely costly for animals to respond fearfully to people that are not
harming them.”
As
for the heartwarming bond between Joao and Dindim, to further
explore whether this relationship is in any way harmful to
the penguin, I turned to International
Bird Rescue,
an organization that has pioneered oiled aquatic bird care.
There
I connected with Barbara Callahan, International Bird Rescue’s
Response Services Director, who had just left Brazil where she was
working with their partner organization, Aiuká
Consultoria em Soluções Ambientais.
Callahan suggested I connect with the Projects Director of Aiuká,
Valeria Ruoppolo, who has been following this case.
About
the unusual human-penguin friendship, Ruoppolo told me, “There is
no harm really, but that is excluding the fact that the animal is
being fed while on shore and that is why it does not go away.”
Takes
a bit of wind out of the friendship sail, but what do you expect?
It’s hard for anyone to turn down free lunch.
In
terms of where exactly the penguin goes when not with Mr. Joao,
Ruoppolo believes the media thus far has gotten it wrong. “Once it
decides to go, the animal clearly knows where it is going back to,
but in my opinion it does not go back south to Argentina as I have
seen all over the media.”
Her
theory? “The penguin is generally away for 4 months and it probably
feeds and swims around south and southeastern Brazil when it decides
to go back to Mr. Joao.”
Well,
you heard it here folks.
Here’s
to friendship and mutual respect between humans and wildlife. To
learn more about International Bird Rescue’s incredible work,
visit www.bird-rescue.org.
Photo
Credit: You
Tube/Wall Street Journal
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