A beautiful dingo in the wild at Ellery Big Hole.
Dingoes Canus lupus dingo are a separate sub-species of wolf Canis lupus lupus, and not descended from domestic dogs Canus lupus familiaris that went feral several thousand years ago. They can interbreed with domestic or feral dogs though and not all wild dogs in Australia are purebred dingoes. The one in the photo above is a fairly typical looking dingo, with characteristic ginger coat and white socks, but you do sometimes see black and tan ones. They don't generally bark, but if you are in the outback it is not uncommon to hear them howling at night. This one was clearly a little bit habituated to people, but hopefully was not being fed by campers in the area. That leads to them becoming a nuisance, with no fear of humans, and they have to be removed.
Dingo tracks in the sand.
6 comments:
Nous n'avons jamais vu de Dingo dans le bush! Nous sommes allés le voir dans un zoo pour voir à quoi il ressemble!
J'ai lu avec amusement vos aventures de jeunesse en Australie!
Go to Fraser Island, off the Queensland coast. You would have to be unlucky not to see wild dingoes on the island.
It reminds me of coyotes in the desert of Southern California.
I guess that's not surprising -- coyotes and wolves are closely enough related to interbreed so they probably have lots of similar behaviour and appearance.
Sadly, dingoes are still being fed by visitors to the island in spite of it being illegal. When they lose their fear of humans and attack (latest incidents this month) they are "humanely" destroyed.
I can't believe there is a single visitor to the island that hasn't heard of the problems with feeding the dingoes and what it leads too. Some people are clearly just idiots, but of course, it isn't them who take the consequences -- it's someone else's child, and the dingoes. They might as well stock the island with domestic dogs and be done with it...
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