Dingo

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The Dingo is wild dog, likely descended from the Indian Wolf. It is commonly known as an Australian wild dog, however its did not originate there, and is in fact found throughout South East Asia and Oceania. They have features in common with both wolves and modern dogs, and are regarded as more-or-less unchanged descendants of an early ancestor of modern dogs. The name dingo comes from the Eora Aboriginal tribe, the mian original tribe from the Sydney Area/

Characteristics
Weighing between 10 and 24 kilograms, Dingos are smaller than wolves of the colder northern hemisphere and have a lean, athletic build, reflective of the poorer country they inhabit and smaller prey on average they encounter. They stand between 44 and 63 cm high at the shoulder, their head-body length varies between 86 and 122 cm. Colour varies, but is usually ginger: some have a reddish tinge, others are more sandy yellow, and some are even black; the underside is lighter. Alpine Dingos are completely white, and are found in the alpine, high elevation areas of the Australian Alps. The yellow dingo like wild dogs that roam the area, actually get the yellow dingo like coloring from dogs that have bred with the dingos. Most Dingos have white markings on the chest, feet, and the tip of the tail; some have a blackish muzzle.

Dingos breed once a year, they don't bark, and have permanently erect ears. They are independent, far more so than domestic dogs, and the skull is distinctive, with a narrower muzzle, larger canine teeth, and a domed head. Wild Dingos prey on a variety of animals, mostly small or medium-sized, but also larger herbivores at need. They are opportunistic carnivores, taking prey ranging in size from lizards and small rodents up to sheep and kangaroos.

Dingos do not generally form packs; they more often travel in pairs or small family groups. However, they are capable of forming larger packs to hunt cooperatively. Dingo groups use defined home territories, these territories can overlap with those of other groups.

Origin
The earliest known Dingo skulls were found in Vietnam and are about 5,500 years old. Dingo remains from 5,000 to 2,500 years old have been found in other parts of South-east Asia, and the earliest fossil record of a dingo in Australia is 3,500 years old. Very Dingo-like bones have also been found in Israel and the West Bank dating 14,000 years old.

The origin of the Dingo is uncertain, but it is likey related to the wolves of south-west Asia, and arose in that area at about the same time as humans began to develop agriculture. Current thinking suggests that modern dogs are a mixture of several separate domestications of wolves at different times and in different areas: the modern Dingo appears to be a relatively pure-bred descendant of one of the earliest domestications. The 14,000 year-old Dingo-like bones found in Israel, and 9,000 year-old bones in the Americas are evidence of the relationships that developed between wolves and people as people migrated eastward, semi-domesticated dogs came with them. The Carolina Dog found in the U.S. southeast resembles the dingo and has common genetic features not found in other dogs.

Health
As with many recently domesticated wild dog breeds, they have no known genetic health problems, such problems would have been weeded out by natural selection in the wild. Dingos are extremely hardy and long lived, with some record as having lived as long as 25 years. They are exceptionally intelligent, and are now being trained and used in Australia as seeing eye dogs.

Introduction to Australia
Dingos did not arrive in Australia as companions of the original Aborigines around 50,000 years ago, but were brought by Austronesian traders much later. A study of dingo mitochondrial DNA published in 2004 places their arrival at around 3000 BC, and suggests that only one small group may be the ancestors of all modern dingos.

The Dingo spread quickly around Australia, probably with human assistance, and is thought to have occupied the entire continent within a short time, except fo Tasmania. The full extent of the ecological change brought about by the introduction of the Dingo remains unknown, but there is little doubt that it was responsible for a series of extinctions, notably of marsupial carnivores, including the last remaining large predator, the Thylacine on the mainland. It is thought that the co-operative pack behaviour of Dingos gave them an important competitive advantage over the more solitary marsupial carnivores, particularly during Australia's frequent droughts.

Relationship with humans
Aboriginal people across the continent adopted the Dingo as a companion animal, using it to assist with hunting and for warmth on cold nights.

When European settlers first arrived in Australia, Dingos were tolerated, even welcomed at times. That changed rapidly when sheep became an important part of the white economy. Dingos were trapped, shot on sight, and poisoned regardless of whether they were truly wild or belonged to Aboriginal people. In the 1880s, construction of the great Dingo Fence began. The Dingo Fence was designed to keep Dingos out of the relatively fertile south-east part of the continent (where they had been exterminated) and protect the sheep flocks of southern Queensland. It would eventually stretch 8500 kilometres; from near Toowoomba through thousands of miles of arid country to the Great Australian Bight and be (at that time) the longest man-made structure in the world. It was only partly successful: Dingos can still be found in parts of the southern states to this day, and although the fence helped reduce losses of sheep to predators, the lack of predation made rabbit and kangaroo numbers explode so its arguable whether their was any real benefit.

Dingos have received bad publicity in recent years as a result of the highly publicised Azaria Chamberlain disappearance and also because of Dingo attacks on Fraser Island in Queensland where a young boy was killed.

Potential extinction
As a result of interbreeding with dogs introduced by European settlers, the purebred Dingo gene pool is being decimated. By the early 1990s, about a third of all wild Dingos in the south-east of the continent were hybrids, and although the process of interbreeding is less advanced in more remote areas, the extinction of the pure subspecies in the wild is highly likely The Dingos on Islands such as Fraser Island are thought to be the purest left.

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