Dingo Facts

Dingo Profile

Most of the truly native mammals to Australia are from the infraclass commonly known as marsupials. Marsupials are primitive mammals that have more or less died out everywhere else and been replaced with much better ones, but being isolated on Australia, the interlopers have had a hard time taking over.

There are no native hoofed animals, no native cats, monkeys, or squirrels. The few placental mammals that do belong there are either bats or rats and so everything else was introduced at one point or another. 

But the dingo is an interesting one. This is a breed of domestic dog, introduced so long ago that their status as invasive comes into question. 

Dingo Facts Overview

Dingos are fascinating animals. They’re a remnant of a prehistoric line of dogs, living alongside a prehistoric line of humans.

They were once domesticated, but have spent the last 4,000 years at least challenging our notions of what that means, as well as what we consider to be invasive.

Today they take over the role of apex predator in the absence of the thylacine and have conquered everywhere North of the Dingo Fence. 

Interesting Dingo Facts

1. They’re probably singing dogs

Aboriginal Australians are the world’s oldest civilisation, arriving on the enormous island more than 75,000 years ago. 

Likewise, the dingo is probably the world’s oldest domestic canine breed still around, staying relatively unchanged for at least 3,500 years, when the oldest skeletal remains are from. 

It looks like they originate from around Asia, from a population of Singing Dogs, which still inhabit New Guinea and are the closest relatives of the dingo. 

They likely made it onto the island with Asian seafarers not long before this, at least 4,000 years ago.

From there, like the marsupials, they become genetically isolated from the rest of the world and while selective pressure bred more and more dog lines elsewhere, the dingo held onto its ancestry a lot more closely. ¹

2. They’re confusing time capsules

The isolation of the dingo makes them unique among dog breeds. They sit somewhere between a wolf and a domestic dog, having branched off from modern dog lineages and remained feral in Australia. 

So, the classification of this animal in an ecological context becomes tricky. Every animal you’ll see arrived there as an alien species at some point, and the lines are blurry when it comes to invasive or naturalised species.

ow long does a species have to exist before it becomes part of the furniture? 

The dingo also pushes the boundaries of what is considered domesticated, since they’ve had thousands of years to re-wild. Just how many thousands this remains a bit of a mystery, but it’s thought they arrived around 4,000 years ago and spent about 500 dispersing all over the continent. 

So, when talking about the dingo ecologists are forced to define terms to a degree or precision that makes them uncomfortable.

Dingos have been running wild on the island a lot longer than the European settlers have, and there has been little to no selective pressure on the breed for most, if not all of that time. 

Their arrival certainly didn’t come without dramatic ecological shifts. ²

3. They might have replaced the thylacine

The thylacine is a great example of the destructive force of human agriculturalists throughout history.

These apex marsupial predators were actively hunted to extinction as a livestock predators when the Europeans declared war on anything that remotely affected their livelihoods. 

But long before that, it’s likely the dingo was pushing the native hunter out of its niche. Being roughly the same size, it would have provided competition for the Thylacine and contributed to its extinction pressure. 

Still, this is a bit of a cop-out – there were no dingoes on Tasmania, having arrived well after the island separated from the mainland around 12,000 years ago. Yet, the thylacine was wiped out there, too. 

In its absence on the mainland, though, the dingo is now the apex predator in Australia. 

4. They don’t make good pets

There are some cool differences between the dingo and modern dog breeds. For one, they can rotate their wrists towards each other like cats can. Dogs can’t do this, which is why door knobs are usually unpickable locks to them.

But a dingo will be a lot better at escaping a room, climbing a fence, opening a latch, and all the things you don’t want your pet dog doing while you’re out. 

They’re also more aggressive, and while they are deeply loyal, it’s usually only to one person who they’ll defend to an unnecessary degree from strangers, making them potentially dangerous animals. 

Dingos also haven’t lost their voice since separating from the mainland singing dogs and can hold their own against any husky at Karaoke, whether you want them to or not. 

5. A Dingo Ate My Baby

There’s quite a common saying in pop culture that has a lesser-known tragic origin. In 1980, a 9-week-old child was killed while camping with her family when a dingo attacked.

At first, the parents were accused of her murder, but years of court battles culminated in the coroner finding evidence that they were telling the truth and they were absolved. 

This deeply traumatic period in their lives has been turned into a bit of a cheap meme that’s been used in various comedy shows, from Seinfeld to The Simpsons, including Tropic Thunder, where Robert Downey Jr.’s character nods to its veracity by saying, “You know that’s a true story? Lady lost a kid? You about to cross some lines.” 

6. Dingo fence

Dingos don’t commonly eat people, but like the thylacine before them, they are considered pests to people with smaller animals around. 

In the South of Australia, a surprisingly effective pest exclusion zone has been set up to keep them out of the lower regions of the continent.

This is one of the longest structures in the world, reaching over 5,600km, and has been mostly successful as a dingo fence, keeping all but a few individuals off the most fertile regions. ³

Dingo Fact-File Summary

Scientific Classification

1. Matt A. Field (2022), “Dingoes are genetically different from domestic dogs, new research reveals”, Australian Geographic.
2. “Arrival of the dingo”, National Museum Australia.
3. Adrian G Fisher (2021), “Australia’s dingo fence from space: satellite images reveal its effects on landscape”, The Guardian.