The world's remaining Dingo (Canis familiaris) populations are concentrated in Austalia and south-east Asia.

In particular it is found in the islands and mainland of southern and southeast Asia including Papua New Guinea (formerly C. hallstromi), Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Burma, Thailand and southern China. Thailand presently has the purest populations of Dingoes. The Dingo is found throughout mainland Australia except where excluded from sheep grazing areas by the famous dingo fence in the east and the west.

Most closely related to the semi-domestic Dog of South-east Asia, it seems to have arrived in Australia about 3,500 years ago. Some Dingos have a semi-domestic relationship with Aborigines (who came to Australia at least 40,000 years ago and could not have introduced the animal).

A subspecies of the domestic Dog, the Dingo cannot be reliably distinguished on any external characteristics. It is a primitice dog that evolved from a wolf 6,000- 10,000 years ago. It is often ginger-colored with white points to the ears and tail, but it can be black as well. It differs from the domestic dog in that the Dingo breeds only once a year and it seldom barks.

Dingos (along with dogs and cross-breeds) are abundant in Aboriginal communities. They have been in Australia for thousands of years and are represented in the rock-art sites around Laura, near Olkola country. The Dingo figures prominently in certain stories.

The average adult Dingo in Australia stands 570 mm at the shoulder, is 1230 mm long from nose to tail-tip, and it weighs 15 kg; Dingoes are smaller in Asia.

It is an inhabitant of woodland and grassland, often the edge of forest, feeding on the Rabbit, as well as on a wide range of terrestrial marsupials, rodents, reptiles and sheep. Macropod marsupials are the most common element of diet in all studies (Australia).

Population density of the Dingo is a function of prey availability. It hunts in packs for large prey, singly when feeding on small animals.

Time of mating: Mar.- Apr. (autumn to early winter in Australia); Average number in a litter: 1-10, mean 5.4 (Australia). Females become sexually mature at 2 years and have only one estrus period each year, although some do not breed in droughts. Mating occurs from autumn to early winter and litters of three or four are born from late winter to spring.

Says Dingo expert, Laurie Corbett: "Dingoes do kill and eat cattle, sheep and other stock; they always have and always will. Pastoralists have so feared Dingoes that many millions of dollars have been spent over the past 150 years or so trying to kill them or exclude them from pastoral areas. The longest fence in the world is a momument to that. Probably more has been written about the Dingo wars than any other aspect of 'dingology', yet only two facts stand out: all the effort has been extremely expensive and, by and large, it has not worked.

Corbett says for sheep farmers there probably are no better solutions. The fencing seems to be the most practical solution, particularly if areas adjacent to sheep paddocks retain adequate native species to support Dingo populations, or if appropriate buffer zones (10-20 km wide) surrounding sheep paddocks are maintained.

There is compelling circumstantial evidence that the Dingo was responsible for the extermination of the Thylacine and Tasmanian Devil on the Australian mainland.

Today Dingoes are under threat of extinction from one primary source. In more settled coasta areas of Australia and increasingly so in outback Australia, the barriers between domestic dogs, (feral and urban) and Dingoes, are being rapidly removed so that cross-breeding is common and the pure Dingo gene pool is being swamped. Already in the South-Eastern highlands about one third of the populations are cross-breeds (hybrids), and, unless there is a radical change in people's attitudes, the extinction of pure Dingoes seems inevitable.

Indeed, in mid-1993 the Dingo was recognized by the Australian National Kennel Council as an official dog breed and adopted as Australia's national breed, according to L. Corbett. He says that unless the registration of pure Dingoes is done absolutely correctly, this landmark decision will speed up the extinction of pure Dingoes. For more information consult his book, The Dingo in Australia and Asia.

"So what does the future hold for the Dingo? In its travels throughout the world the Dingo has faced many battles for survival against man and nature, from fullscale eradication campaigns and enormous fences to unjustified victimization and subversive genetic manipulations. Although Dingoes have won most of the battles, the cruel irony is that they are steadily losing the war, thanks to their evolutionary progeny, domestic dogs.   In the end, their chances of continued survival in the wild will rest solely on the efforts of an informed public to stop contact between Dingoes and domestic dogs, and to take pride in Dingoes as native species whether they be Thai or Australian."

A Section of the Dingo Fence

References:

Ronald Strahan, A Photographic Guide to Mammals of Australia, The Australian Museum and New Holland Publishers, Ltd., 1995.

Dingo, Canis lupus dingo - http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/2970/dingo.htm

Dingo (Canis familiaris dingo) - http://www.canids.org/SPPACCTS/dingo.htm

Laurie Corbett, The Dingo in Australia and Asia, Australian Natural History Series, University of New South Wales Press, 1995.