Dingo

Frazer Islands - Australia

The Australian Dingo is an ancient, free roaming, primitive canine unique to the continent of Australia. Its original ancestors are thought to have arrived with humans from southeast Asia thousands of years ago, when dogs were still relatively undomesticated and closer to their wild Asian Gray Wolf parent species, Canis lupus. Since that time, living largely apart from people and other dogs, together with the demands of Australian ecology, has caused them to develop features and instincts that distinguish them from all other canines. Australian Dingoes have maintained ancient characteristics that unite them, along with other primitive dogs, into a taxon named after them, Canis lupus dingo, and has separated them from the domestic dog, Canis lupus familiaris.

Dingoes play an important role in the various ecosystems of Australia; they are apex predators and the largest terrestrial predators on the continent.

Due to its habit of attacking livestock and the vulnerability of sheep, dingoes and other wild dogs are seen as a pest by the sheep industry and the resulting control methods normally run counter to dingo conservation efforts.

Today, it is estimated that the majority of the modern "dingoes" are also descended from other domestic dogs. The number of these so-called dingo-hybrids had increased significantly over the last decades and the dingo was therefore classified as vulnerable.