![]() ![]() ![]() Even though we could not see the dogs after the initial sighting we could tell exactly where they were from what was, for all intents and purposes, a “Mexican Wave” of kangaroos cascading along the tree line for a couple of kilometres. The dogs hunt the edge of the open grassland, where the roos were grazing. I caught a few fleeting glimpses of two wild dogs bounding through the long grass behind the roos. Even though it was about a kilometre away, and still pre sunrise, I could see the action in great clarity through my Swarovski 10x42 binoculars. The fireworks are about to go off! Look for any roos scattering, the faster they move, the closer the dogs will be on their heels.”Īs if on cue, another small mob roos a little further on suddenly launched into high gear. Within a few moments I noticed another bunch of roos sit upright and all look in the same direction. Look for any roos on alert, or on the move.” Keep watching because the action is just starting. See how they are behaving and scanning about. They have all just gone on guard, they have just heard, or more likely smelt, the dogs. “See that mob of roos up near the split boab tree? About 800 metres away. There were roos spread all over the paddock, grazing unconcernedly as first light came. We could track the dogs without actually seeing them by watching the kangaroos. However a batch of new born calves would be at great risk and the grazier had lost many calves to dogs in this paddock over the years.įrom our concealed vantage point we glassed the surrounding terrain. While they would mischievously buzz the steers, just for the hell of it, and which we had witnessed firsthand, they did not pose any threat to those large animals. #Wild dogs australia full#There were also wild dogs in the paddock too, a bitch with two full grown pups from last year’s breeding season. Soon, they would be mustered and after that the new tenants would arrive a herd of pregnant cows. ![]() It was not called the eight thousand acre paddock for nothing.Īt the moment it held a small mob of fat steers. We settled into a grove of gidgee on the edge of an extensive grassed area and waited for first light. A small, dim, torch pointed at our feet helped us avoid tripping over dead timber in the grass, or worse, stepping on a Mulga snake. After a twenty-five kilometre drive over dirt tracks we had then walked a kilometre or so in the dark. Story and photos by Don Caswell - Aussie Hunter Website #Wild dogs australia professional#Don Caswell gets some coaching from a professional dogger. Journal reference: Science Advances, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.Hunting the educated wild dogs of the western grazing lands is a real challenge. “But from a conservation perspective, knowing there is a really significant difference between them is important.” “Lots of farmers believe that if you see a dog that’s running around, there’s no difference between a dingo and a feral domestic dog,” he says. In many parts of Australia, dingoes, feral domestic dogs and their hybrids are culled to prevent them from attacking livestock. The findings have implications for how dingoes are treated, says Ballard. “It’s like how you can put a wild cat in a crate and bring it over – it doesn’t mean it’s domesticated.” The dingo may have been introduced to Australia as a tamed wild animal, meaning one that has become accustomed to living alongside people but hasn’t been actively domesticated through selective breeding, he says. “This reinforces the notion that dingoes were never truly domesticated,” says Ballard. Dingoes, in contrast, have a low-starch diet that mainly comprises marsupials and reptiles, and only have a single copy of this gene, similar to wolves and some Arctic dog breeds. This is probably because they began eating rice after humans domesticated the crop around 10,000 years ago. One major difference is that domestic dogs have evolved multiple copies of a gene called AMY2B that allows digestion of starchy foods. Modern domestic dogs didn’t arrive in Australia until 1788, when they were introduced by Europeans. This is probably because dingoes spent thousands of years cut off from other dog species, giving them time to evolve in their own unique way, he says. There is more genetic variation between dingoes and domestic dogs than there is between any two human populations, says Ballard. They discovered that the dingo differs substantially from these breeds and is a genetic intermediate between domestic dogs and wild wolves. ![]()
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