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Photos of two widowed penguins hugging each other will touch your heart

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  • Photographer Tobias Baumgaertner captured two widowed penguins comforting each other while watching the city lights in Melbourne in 2019.
  • Tobias only shared the photos on Instagram recently, which incited emotional responses from people on social media.
  • The viral photo somehow provides some relief to people who are hurting during this pandemic.

Two penguins, both widowed, had been standing together for hours, watching the Melbourne lights, and for them, it was the most comforting place on earth.

Photographer Tobias Baumgaertner captured photos of the two in 2019, and only shared the images recently on Instagram.

“During times like this the truly lucky ones are those that can be with the person/people they love most. I captured this moment about a year ago,” Tobias wrote on Instagram alongside the first two images.

“These two Fairy penguins poised upon a rock overlooking the Melbourne skyline were standing there for hours, flipper in flipper, watching the sparkling lights of the skyline and ocean. A volunteer approached me and told me that the white one was an elderly lady who had lost her partner and apparently so did the younger male to the left,” the post continued.

Since then, the two had been meeting on a regular basis, just comforting each other for hours, admiring the nighttime skyline in in St Kilda, a suburb of Melbourne.

Tobias’ post was a hit on Instagram, and it even reached the Twitterverse through Matt, the man behind two popular dog Twitter accounts, who shared the photos on Twitter.

“Couldn’t stop thinking about these penguins enjoying the Melbourne skyline together so i found the original photographer and apparently they’re BOTH WIDOWED i can’t handle it,” tweeted Matt, and his tweet now has 141,000 likes and 44,500 retweets.

People around the world were touched, leading a woman to comment that the scene “is too beautiful for words.” Another added, “”I’m not crying, you’re crying.”

According to Tobias, he spent three full nights with the penguins before taking the snaps.

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Photo Credit: @tobiasvisuals/Instagram

“Between not being able or allowed to use any lights and the tiny penguins continuously moving, rubbing their flippers on each other’s backs and cleaning one another, it was really hard to get a shot but I got lucky during one beautiful moment,” he said.

After a few days, the photographer shared one more photo of the penguins, saying that “the way that these two lovebirds were caring for one another stood out from the entire colony.”

He went on, “While all the other penguins were sleeping or running around, those two seemed to just stand there and enjoy every second they had together, holding each other in their flippers and talking about penguin stuff.”

“Pain has brought them together. I guess sometimes you find love when you least expect it. It’s a privilege to truly love someone, paradisiacal when they love you back,” Tobias concluded.

Source: Insider

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