Penguin travels across ocean every year to visit man who saved his life

A penguin may be close to claiming the title of man’s best friend.

A Magellanic penguin has migrated thousands of miles from Patagonia to Brazil every year for the last five years to reunite with the man who saved his life.

The penguin, named Jinjing, usually spends eight months of the year with his rescuer and the rest of the year breeding off the coast of Argentina, according to a Wall Street Journal video.

In 2011, retired bricklayer and part-time fisherman Joao Pereira de Souza, 71, found the tiny penguin covered in oil and close to death, lying on rocks on a local beach near Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the Wall Street Journal reported in October.

Pereira de Souza helped rehabilitate his new friend. “He took a drink of water and then came back to the beach. So I gave him three more sardines, and that was it,” Pereira de Souza told the Wall Street Journal. “He never left me again.”

“I love the penguin like it’s my own child and I believe the penguin loves me,” said Pereira de Souza in an interview with Globo TV.