Captive dingoes

Jo said:
Dingo boy and I have lectured on dog evolution so have looked into this.
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well then you'd be much more educated candidate to comment on the subject that i am jo.

i think at the heart of the "what is a dingo?" debate is actually the bigger question of "what is a domesticated animal?". if domesticated animals are mere races of their wild ancestors, and dogs are indeed wolves then the name Canis lupus familiaris should stand for a dog.

but then where does that leave the dingo? for unless the dingo evolved exactly the way it did on its own accord, then its in fact a breed of domestic dog gone feral, albeit for thousands of years, and doesn't theoretically deserve its own scientific name. the dingo's name, like everything form a pug to an alsatian would also be Canis lupus familiaris.

unless of course you consider the thousands of years feral make the "re-wilding" of the dingo deserve its own status of subspecies distinct from the domestic dog?

the other side of it is that domestic animals have evolved, regardless of it being at the hands of humans, enough to actually be considered their own species.

if this is your belief then your a Canis familiaris person, and the dingo could very well be called Canis f. dingo as would my dog be called a Canis f. bichon frise!

i am very intrigued by all this and probably lean towards the dog being it own species.
 
Sorry Patrick, wasn't trying to be a smartass! Depends what definition of species you use as to whether the domestic dog could qualify. It is quite able to interbreed with wolves, and produce fertile offspring, so it doesn't fit the traditional species criteria. Genetically they are also too similar to differentiate them. The argument of what constitutes a species though is convoluted and too many for me to remember, it does my head in! But you are correct in thinking that dingos were probably partly domesticated and then reverted back to the wild state.

Dingo boy just wrote a review on this so he knows it better than I do. It's an interesting area and another one where people don't agree.
 
there is a wildlife park near Helensburgh N.S.W that keeps dingos called Symbio wildlife park.
 
Jo said:
I don't think dogs could evolve from wolves before we domesticated them, because the characteristics that dogs show only arise from the process of domestication. The behavioural traits that dogs possess have to be selected for by humans, and there was concurrent physiological and morphological changes in dogs as well during domestication.
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I'd agree with this. I'm not a behavuoural scientist either but I think this is known scientific fact? Apart from the physical changes, there are behavioural ones such play- which domestic dogs exhibit throughout their lives(I'm not saying adult wolves never play...) to a greater extent.

Regarding monogamy/polygamy- several domesticated species change over. Wild geese are strictly monogamous, but domestic ones are polygamous- at least to an extent, though a male will still often favour one mate and eventually reject others- a harkback to his monogamous origins.

It seems domestication weakens the natural instinct i.e. to be monogamous. So I'm not sure domestic dogs are actually truly polygamous(?)- they don't normally live in packs so its rather difficult to tell what they would do under 'natural' conditions.. A stud dog mating several bitches is not a real test as although its polygamy of a sort, the matings are likely to occur at long intervals and its a very artificial situation anyway. When I owned two dogs, male and female, the male definately showed a sort of fundamental pair bond towards his 'mate' but how solid this was, one can't tell without testing it..
 
wild dingoes.

Dingo Boy.

Thanks for the detailed summary of the status of wild dingoes- it was very interesting to read. I never saw any Dingoes(except in wildlife parks) when I was in Australia, even travelling around in the Red Centre- maybe I didn't go to the right places....

I half expected to see them at Ayers Rock but I know there was an eradication programme there after the famous Ayers Rock dingo/baby case and my visits were quite va while after that. I never saw any around Alice Springs either, even though we spent quite a lot of time travelling out in the Bush.
 
Pertinax, having lived in Yallara (the sercive town for Uluru) for a while and having traveld through the area a bit i can say that the purebreed dingos around the area are really shy and will often hide or run if they can hear you coming. and you should have gone to my friend in the red centers back yard she has two so gaurented to see them!!
 
torie said:
Pertinax, having lived in Yallara (the sercive town for Uluru) for a while and having traveld through the area a bit i can say that the purebreed dingos around the area are really shy and will often hide or run if they can hear you coming. and you should have gone to my friend in the red centers back yard she has two so gaurented to see them!!
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oh thanks. I wish I'd known that a few years ago(my last visit...):rolleyes:
 
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circa 2002, national geographic did a really great article on the evolution of dogs. they pretty much confirmed that asian wolves are indeed the sole ancestors of domestic dogs, so in reality i don't really know why i suggested otherwise!

what grant said is very interesting regarding domestic animals instincts being suppressed by the domestic environment. this whole thing actually fascinates me and i would love to see what parallels can be drawn between feral domestics and their wild ancestors.

do they generally revert?

interestingly the animals exterior image often reverts back to a wild-like form quite quickly. i have read feral cats often end up entirely tabby after a few generations. feral pigs have quickly changed about as close to a european boar as they can get (but the piglets lack the distinctive pattern of the wild boar). and there is a breed of sheep in scotland that has long reverted to a uniform type that appears different distinctly from domestic sheep. whether or not its reminiscent of the sheep's ancestors however is open to conjecture, since the debate is still out as to what particular species (and that could be species, plural) contributed to the domestic form. this is another interesting
issue. it appears in some domestic animals such as cattle, potentially more than one wild species was hybridised to from the breed.

i suppose ultimately as scientists slowly refine their techniques and find the funding -genetics will tell all the secrets of where domestic animals truly came from and surely the dog, and thus the dingo is at the top of that list.

i know much research has already gone into this but so far it seems to me there are still many unanswered questions.
 
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patrick said:
circa 2002, national geographic did a really great article on the evolution of dogs. they pretty much confirmed that domestic dogs are indeed ancestors of wolves, so in reality i don't really know why i suggested otherwise!
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Surely you mean wolves are the ancestor of domestic dogs!:)
 
patrick said:
interestingly the animals exterior image often reverts back to a wild-like form quite quickly. i have read feral cats often end up entirely tabby after a few generations. and there is a breed of sheep in scotland that has long reverted to a uniform type that appears different distinctly from domestic sheep.
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I guess 'tabby' is a dominant colour for cats, so without any selection it comes to the fore again in feral populations. Most of the ones that used to live wild in Central Australia(do they still?) and still do in NZ are definately tabby.

The sheep you refer to is probably the Soay. They're thought to be a very ancient(Nordic) breed and are very primitive. Athough clearly sheep, they're smaller than domestic breeds while the females are horned as well as the rams, their fleece is tight and sheds itself like e.g. a camel, and they are very agile and 'wild.' Apparently if you try to round them up with a sheepdog, while other sheep will bunch together in a flock, Soays scatter in all directions, leaving the dog totally nonplussed!

Another domestic/wild fact for you; did you know domesticated ducks will all roost together closely with their bodies touching. Their wild Mallard relatives also sit together but spaced with their bodies a wingflap apart- in case they need emergency takeoff...:)
 
patrick said:
feral pigs have quickly changed about as close to a european boar as they can get (but the piglets lack the distinctive pattern of the wild boar).
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I think that's because dometic pigs have somewhere along the line had the gene for striped piglets, bred out of them. If you cross them with wild boar, the stripes always appear again immediately in the piglets, so again it may be a dominant gene.
 
thanks for response grant - thats interesting stuff (i like this conversation) though we might need to ask mark or ben to be move it to a new "domestics gone wild" thread (like the title? thanks, i thought of it myself ;)).

the sheep were definitely soay. thats the ones, i forgot their name. its amazing how quickly they revert. horns on the females, self shedding and predator evasion tactics have all returned. they are a uniform dark chocolate colouration from memory.

another interesting one is this - did you know arabian or dromedary camels are said to be long extinct in wild form? they now only exist as ferals in which the only true populations of such are right here in australia!

anyhow, someone tell me about nubian goats... i want to know where those big flappy ears came from..
 
domestics gone wild.

patrick said:
the sheep were definitely soay. thats the ones, i forgot their name. its amazing how quickly they revert. horns on the females, self shedding and predator evasion tactics have all returned. they are a uniform dark chocolate colouration from memory.

another interesting one is this - did you know arabian or dromedary camels are said to be long extinct in wild form? they now only exist as ferals in which the only true populations of such are right here in australia!

anyhow, someone tell me about nubian goats... i want to know where those big flappy ears came from..
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Yes, its a fascinating subject that deserves its own thread.

Actually, Soay sheep haven't reverted- their ancestry isn't fully understodd but they are possibly an example of very early domestication, by neolithic people perhaps- so they're not truly wild sheep, nor really domestic either.... :confused: There are two colour phases- dark brown and a light coffee brown- the two colours occur in the ratio 2:1. in favour of the darks.

I think I knew about the camels- haven't they got rid of a lot of the ones in OZ nowadays?

Goats- floppy ears seem to have developed in tropical countries(Nubia?!!) so maybe this is related to heat loss?(like African eles...) We have feral goats in the UK-in places like Wales and Scotland- some herds are thought to have a long history being descended from the 'old English' breed which were the domestic goats of medieval England. As such they are little changed in appearance. Other groups are more recent
 
Thanks

I just wanted to thank everyone so much for their help in establishing a list of zoos and wildlife parks which house dingoes. This was my first thread on ZooBeat, and I am very happy and pleased with the lovely people that are members!
So thanks again.

p.s. I dont mind that the conversation went in other directions (eg from captive dingo locations to domestication of sheep), as its great to see such interesting discussions emerge! I wish I had to time to ad my interpretation of the area, but sadly I dont.

Cheers
 
I do not think it would ever be possable to wipe out the Camels in Australia. There was about 400,000 ten years ago. I think the estimate now is about 800,000 in central Australia. An organised meat industry may contain their numbers if it ever gets organised.
 
one day i'll own a camel. they dribble and urinate on themselves but so do most of my friends - i have liked them ever since doing a camel safari in the thar desert.
 
Hi guys,
Interesting thread, am fascinated by dingoes. Can anyone clarify the current laws regarding dingoes in each state? I know some states they can be kept and bred and some not at all. Which states regard them as ferral pests ( I know QLD does) and which don't.
 
Are you sure that QLD regards them as feral pests? queensland is home to one of the very few pure dingo populations in Australia.
 
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