Police p-p-p-pick up a runaway penguin – video

A runaway penguin has been picked up by police after being found wandering lost and confused in the streets of Nuevo Chimbote in northern Peru.

The International Business Times reports that "it is unclear how the penguin ended up in the middle of the street but local media speculates it might have fallen off a passing vehicle".

One witness said: "We saw it walking in the lights of the cars. It was in the street. We did not see where he came from."

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Footage taken by one member of the public shows the penguin in distress as residents attempt to scoop him up.

Local police eventually got hold of the bird and, despite a few pecks in protest, were able to take him to the station and feed him to calm him down.

During the experience, the penguin narrowly avoided being bitten by a dog and run over by a taxi, according to Sky News.

Local media report that the bird, dubbed "Pingui" by residents, will be taken to the penguin habitat Vivero Forestal de Chimbote to recover.

Pingui is not the first penguin to go Awol. A humboldt penguin went missing from Tokyo Sea Life Park in 2012 and was recaptured 82 days later on a riverbank about 8km from its home. Keepers believe the bird – known only as Penguin Number 337 – had made a break for freedom by scrambling over a rock twice its size.

In another case, two Welsh tourists were fined after drunkenly breaking into Sea World on Queensland's Gold Coast in Australia, swimming with dolphins and then stealing a seven-year-old fairy penguin called Dirk. After waking up to find him in their apartment the following day, they released him into a canal and he was later rescued and reunited with his partner Peaches in Sea World.