Dingo

The dingo is a lineage of dog found in Australia. It is a medium-sized canine that possesses a lean, hardy body adapted for speed, agility, and stamina. Its three main coat colourations are light ginger or tan, black and tan, or creamy white. The skull is wedge-shaped and appears large in proportion to the body. Its taxonomic classification is debated: it is variously considered a form of domestic dog (Canis familiaris or Canis lupus familiaris) not warranting recognition as a subspecies, or a subspecies of dog (Canis familiaris dingo) or wolf (Canis lupus dingo), or a full species in its own right (Canis dingo). The dingo is closely related to the New Guinea singing dog: their lineage split early from the lineage that led to today's domestic dogs, and can be traced back through Maritime Southeast Asia to Asia. The oldest remains of dingoes discovered in Australia are around 3,500 years old. A dingo pack usually consists of a mated pair, their offspring from the current year, and sometimes offspring from the previous year.

Etymology

The name "dingo" comes from the Dharug language used by the Indigenous Australians of the Sydney area. The first British colonists to arrive in Australia in 1788 established a settlement at Port Jackson and noted "dingoes" living with Indigenous Australians. The name was first recorded in 1789 by Watkin Tench in his Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay:

The only domestic animal they have is the dog, which in their language is called Dingo, and a good deal resembles the fox dog of England. These animals are equally shy of us, and attached to the natives. One of them is now in the possession of the Governor, and tolerably well reconciled to his new master. Related Dharug words include "ting-ko" meaning "bitch", and "tun-go-wo-re-gal" meaning "large dog". The dingo has different names in different Aboriginal Australian languages, such as boolomo, dwer-da, joogoong, kal, kurpany, maliki, mirigung, noggum, papa-inura, and wantibirri. On K'gari (formerly Fraser Island) in Queensland, where the dingo population is long-established and well-known, the wongari has a significant place in the culture of the traditional owners of the island, the Butchulla people. Some authors propose that a difference existed between camp dingoes and wild dingoes as they had different names among Aboriginal Australian peoples. The people of the Yarralin, Northern Territory, region frequently call those dingoes that live with them warlagu, and those that live in the wilderness ngurragin. They also use the name warlagu to refer to both dingoes and dogs. The colonial settlers of New South Wales used the name dingo only for camp dogs. It is proposed that in New South Wales the camp dingoes became wild only after the colonial destruction of Aboriginal society.

Taxonomy

Dogs associated with indigenous people were first recorded by Jan Carstenszoon in the Cape York Peninsula area in 1623. In 1699, Captain William Dampier visited the coast of what is now Western Australia and recorded that "my men saw two or three beasts like hungry wolves, lean like so many skeletons, being nothing but skin and bones". In 1788, the First Fleet arrived in Botany Bay under the command of Australia's first colonial governor, Arthur Phillip, who took ownership of a dingo and in his journal made a brief description with an illustration of the "Dog of New South Wales". In 1793, based on Phillip's brief description and illustration, the "Dog of New South Wales" was classified by Friedrich Meyer as Canis dingo. In 1999, a study of the maternal lineage through the use of mitochondrial DNA (mDNA) as a genetic marker indicates that the dingo and New Guinea singing dog developed at a time when human populations were more isolated from each other. In the third edition of Mammal Species of the World, published in 2005, the mammalogist W. Christopher Wozencraft listed under the wolf Canis lupus its wild subspecies, and proposed two additional subspecies: "familiaris Linnaeus, 1758 [domestic dog]" and "dingo Meyer, 1793 [domestic dog]". Wozencraft included hallstromi—the New Guinea singing dog—as a taxonomic synonym for the dingo. He referred to the mDNA study as one of the guides in forming his decision. The inclusion of familiaris and dingo under a "domestic dog" clade has been noted by other mammalogists, and their classification under the wolf debated. In 2019, a workshop hosted by the IUCN/SSC Canid Specialist Group considered the New Guinea singing dog and the dingo to be feral dogs (Canis familiaris), which therefore should not be assessed for the IUCN Red List. In 2020, the American Society of Mammalogists considered the dingo a synonym of the domestic dog. Recent DNA sequencing of a 'pure' wild dingo from South Australia suggests that the dingo has a different DNA methylation pattern from the German Shepherd. In 2024, a study found that the Dingo and New Guinea singing dog show 5.5% genome introgression from the ancestor of the recently extinct Japanese wolf, with Japanese dogs showing 4% genome introgression. This introgression occurred before the ancestor of the Japanese wolf arrived in Japan.

Domestic status The dingo is regarded as a feral dog because it descended from domesticated ancestors. The dingo's relationship with Indigenous Australians is one of commensalism, in which two organisms live in close association but do not depend on each other for survival. They both hunt and sleep together. The dingo is therefore comfortable enough around humans to associate with them but is still capable of living independently. Any free-ranging, unowned dog can be socialised to become an owned dog, as some dingoes do when they join human families. Although the dingo exists in the wild, it associates with humans but has not been selectively bred, unlike other domesticated animals. Therefore its status as a domestic animal is not clear. Whether the dingo was a wild or domesticated species was not clarified from Meyer's original description, which translated from German reads:

It is not known if it is the only dog species in New South Wales nor if it can also still be found in the wild state; however so far it appears to have lost little of its wild condition; moreover, no divergent varieties have been discovered.

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