The Dingo (either included in the species Canis familiaris, or considered one of the following independent taxa: Canis familiaris dingo, Canis dingo, or Canis lupus dingo) is an ancient (basal) lineage of dog[5][6] found in Australia. Its taxonomic classification is debated as indicated by the variety of scientific names presently applied in different publications. It is variously considered a form of domestic dog not warranting recognition as a subspecies, a subspecies of dog or wolf, or a full species in its own right.

The dingo is a medium-sized canine that possesses a lean, hardy body adapted for speed, agility, and stamina. The dingo's 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. 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 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

Portrait of a Large Dog from New Holland by George Stubbs, 1772. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.

The name "dingo" comes from the Dharug language used by the Indigenous Australians of the Sydney area.[7] The first British colonists to arrive in Australia in 1788 established a settlement at Port Jackson and noted "dingoes" living with Indigenous Australians.[8] 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.[8]

Related Dharug words include "ting-ko" meaning "bitch", and "tun-go-wo-re-gal" meaning "large dog".[7] The dingo has different names in different indigenous Australian languages, such as boolomo, dwer-da, joogoong, kal, kurpany, maliki, mirigung, noggum, papa-inura, and wantibirri.[9] Some authors propose that a difference existed between camp dingoes and wild dingoes as they had different names among indigenous tribes.[10] The people of the Yarralin, Northern Territory, region frequently call those dingoes that live with them walaku, and those that live in the wilderness ngurakin.[11] They also use the name walaku to refer to both dingoes and dogs.[12] The colonial settlers of New South Wales wrote using the name dingo only for camp dogs.[13] It is proposed that in New South Wales the camp dingoes only became wild after the colonial destruction of Aboriginal society.[2]

Taxonomy

Dogs associated with indigenous people were first recorded by Jan Carstenszoon in the Cape York Peninsula area in 1623.[15] 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".[16] 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[8] and in his journal made a brief description with an illustration of the "Dog of New South Wales".[14] In 1793, based on Phillip's brief description and illustration, the "Dog of New South Wales" was classified by Friedrich Meyer as Canis dingo.[3]

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.[17] 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.[18] The inclusion of familiaris and dingo under a "domestic dog" clade has been noted by other mammalogists,[19] and their classification under the wolf debated.[20]

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.[21]

In 2020, the American Society of Mammalogists considered the dingo a synonym of the domestic dog.[22] Recent DNA sequencing of a 'pure' wild dingo from South Australia suggests that the dingo has a different DNA methylation pattern to the German Shepherd.[6] 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.[23]

Domestic status

The dingo is regarded as a feral dog because it descended from domesticated ancestors.[1][19] 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.[24] Any free-ranging, unowned dog can be socialised to become an owned dog, as some dingoes do when they join human families.[25] Although the dingo exists in the wild,[26] it associates with humans, but has not been selectively bred unlike other domesticated animals.[2][26] Therefore, its status as a domestic animal is not clear.[2] Whether the dingo was a wild or domesticated species was not clarified from Meyer's original description, which translated from the German language reads:

It is not known if it is the only dog species in New South Wales, and 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.[3]

History

The earliest known dingo remains, found in Western Australia, date to 3,450 years ago.[1][2][26] Based on a comparison of modern dingoes with these early remains, dingo morphology has not changed over these thousands of years. This suggests that no artificial selection has been applied over this period and that the dingo represents an early form of dog.[26] They have lived, bred, and undergone natural selection in the wild, isolated from other dogs until the arrival of European settlers, resulting in a unique breed.[27][28]

In 2020, an mDNA study of ancient dog remains from the Yellow River and Yangtze River basins of southern China showed that most of the ancient dogs fell within haplogroup A1b, as do the Australian dingoes and the pre-colonial dogs of the Pacific, but in low frequency in China today. The specimen from the Tianluoshan archaeological site, Zhejiang province dates to 7,000 YBP (years before present) and is basal to the entire haplogroup A1b lineage. The dogs belonging to this haplogroup were once widely distributed in southern China, then dispersed through Southeast Asia into New Guinea and Oceania, but were replaced in China by dogs of other lineages 2,000 YBP.[29]

The oldest reliable date for dog remains found in mainland Southeast Asia is from Vietnam at 4,000 YBP, and in Island Southeast Asia from Timor-Leste at 3,000 YBP.[30] The earliest dingo remains in the Torres Straits date to 2,100 YBP. In New Guinea, the earliest dog remains date to 2,500–2,300 YBP from Caution Bay near Port Moresby, but no ancient New Guinea singing dog remains have been found.[1]

The earliest dingo skeletal remains in Australia are estimated at 3,450 YBP from the Mandura Caves on the Nullarbor Plain, south-eastern Western Australia;[1][2] 3,320 YBP from Woombah Midden near Woombah, New South Wales; and 3,170 YBP from Fromme's Landing on the Murray River near Mannum, South Australia.[2] Dingo bone fragments were found in a rock shelter located at Mount Burr, South Australia, in a layer that was originally dated 7,000–8,500 YBP.[31] Excavations later indicated that the levels had been disturbed, and the dingo remains "probably moved to an earlier level."[20][32] The dating of these early Australian dingo fossils led to the widely held belief that dingoes first arrived in Australia 4,000 YBP and then took 500 years to disperse around the continent.[26] However, the timing of these skeletal remains was based on the dating of the sediments in which they were discovered, and not the specimens themselves.[30]

In 2018, the oldest skeletal bones from the Madura Caves were directly carbon dated between 3,348 and 3,081 YBP, providing the earliest evidence of the dingo and that dingoes may have arrived later than had previously been proposed. The next-most reliable timing is based on desiccated flesh dated 2,200 YBP from Thylacine Hole, 110 km west of Eucla on the Nullarbor Plain, southeastern Western Australia. When dingoes first arrived, they would have been taken up by Indigenous Australians, who then provided a network for their swift transfer around the continent. Based on the recorded distribution time for dogs across Tasmania and cats across Australia once indigenous Australians had acquired them, the dispersal of dingoes from their point of landing until they occupied continental Australia is proposed to have taken only 70 years.[30] The red fox is estimated to have dispersed across the continent in only 60–80 years.[26]

At the end of the last glacial maximum and the associated rise in sea levels, Tasmania became separated from the Australian mainland 12,000 YBP,[33] and New Guinea 6,500[34]–8,500 YBP[34][35] by the inundation of the Sahul Shelf.[36] Fossil remains in Australia date to around 3,500 YBP and no dingo remains have been uncovered in Tasmania, so the dingo is estimated to have arrived in Australia at a time between 3,500 and 12,000 YBP. To reach Australia through Island Southeast Asia even at the lowest sea level of the last glacial maximum, a journey of at least 50 kilometres (31 mi) over open sea between ancient Sunda and Sahul was necessary, so they must have accompanied humans on boats.[37]

Phylogeny

The Sahul Shelf and the Sunda Shelf during the past 12,000 years: Tasmania separated from the mainland 12,000 YBP,[33] and New Guinea separated from the mainland 6,500[34]–8,500 YBP.[34][35]

Whole genome sequencing indicates that, while dogs are a genetically divergent subspecies of the grey wolf,[38] the dog is not a descendant of the extant grey wolf. Rather, these are sister taxa that share a common ancestor from a ghost population of wolves that disappeared at the end of the Late Pleistocene.[39] The dog and the dingo are not considered separate species by all researchers,[38] with those considering the dingo to be a member of C. familiaris referring to them as a basal breed, alongside the Basenji.[a] [38][41][39]

Mitochondrial genome sequences indicate that the dingo falls within the domestic dog clade,[42] and that the New Guinea singing dog is genetically closer to those dingoes that live in southeastern Australia than to those that live in the northwest.[34] The dingo and New Guinea singing dog lineage can be traced back from Island Southeast Asia to Mainland Southeast Asia.[1] Gene flow from the genetically divergent Tibetan wolf forms 2% of the dingo's genome,[38] which likely represents ancient admixture in eastern Eurasia.[39][43]

By the close of the last ice age 11,700 years ago, five ancestral dog lineages had diversified from each other, with one of these being represented today by the New Guinea singing dog.[44] In 2020, the first whole genome sequencing of the dingo and the New Guinea singing dog was undertaken. The study indicates that the ancestral lineage of the dingo/New Guinea singing dog clade arose in southern East Asia, migrated through Island Southeast Asia 9,900 YBP, and reached Australia 8,300 YBP; however, the human population which brought them remains unknown. The dingo's genome indicates that it was once a domestic dog which commenced a process of feralisation since its arrival 8,300 years ago, with the new environment leading to changes in those genomic regions which regulate metabolism, neurodevelopment, and reproduction.[45]

A 2016 genetic study shows that the lineage of those dingoes found today in the northwestern part of the Australian continent split from the lineage of the New Guinea singing dog and southeastern dingo 8,300 years ago, followed by a split between the New Guinea singing dog lineage from the southeastern dingo lineage 7,800 years ago. The study proposes that two dingo migrations occurred when sea levels were lower and Australia and New Guinea formed one landmass named Sahul[34][46] that existed until 6,500–8,000 years ago.[26][34][46] Whole genome analysis of the dingo indicates there are three sub-populations which exist in Northeast (Tropical), Southeast (Alpine), and West/Central Australia (Desert).[45] Morphological data showing the dingo skulls from Southeastern Australia (Alpine dingoes) being quite distinct from the other ecotypes. And genomic and mitochondrial DNA sequencing demonstrating at least 2 dingo mtDNA haplotypes colonised Australia.[47]

In 2020, a genetic study found that the New Guinea Highland wild dogs were genetically basal to the dingo and the New Guinea singing dog, and therefore the potential originator of both.[48]