ONE GENE DOTH NOT A HYBRID MAKE –

the clever semantics of classification of the dingo as “wild-dog”

By Lyn Watson, Dingo Discovery Centre, Victoria

There is no doubt at all that the advent of a DNA test for dingo identity has been the greatest advance for scientific studies into our special canine.

I am afraid to call him a dog, or even a wolf. He really is neither.

Scientific nomenclature still has two labels on him. Canis lupus dingo and canis familiaris dingo. Each version will of course be utilised as it suits each individual or group, or government body, dependent upon their future plans for him. I fear that the DNA laboratory test may well prove to be a two edged sword for us involved in the crusade, of conservation.

It is becoming clear that those government departments hell bent on eradicating pest animals will not embrace the lupus tag. They recognize only familiaris. I am sure there are all deep and fundamental legal ramifications surrounding this. It does not suit primary industries to recognize the lupus tag, for they would then be willfully eradicating what is clearly primitive wild life and seen by the public as having double standards if they were. It is quite acceptable to exterminate a dog damaging stock, but it is not legal or acceptable to exterminate naturally occurring wild life, such as the eagle, doing the same thing. It really is not in the interests of the rural lobby to give such status to the top order predator in the Australian eco-system. Nor is it in the interests of the chemical manufacturers who have landed lucrative ongoing contracts to produce 1080. Unfortunately the impending doom of this special Australian native is thereby nigh.

Were the title of lupus to be accepted then I am sure more grants would be available in Australia for scientific and in particular biological and behavioural studies. Currently the only grants available here are for the more effective eradication of canis familiaris dingo. Any other studies are being done on overseas scientific grants. This is a shameful situation. The dingo has a hidden story to be unraveled which will assist in our understanding of where and how humans settled the earth.

The ADCA has not yet taken the step of defining the dingo. I believe we should be extremely cautious in doing this, given the political status of this special creature. We have set up our own stud book, and taken on and incorporated the Australian Species Management register for dingoes held in captivity, and this includes those held in fauna parks throughout Australia. We prefer to view him as wild – that is as lupus, rather than familiaris. We don’t want to see him classed under the “familiaris” mantle, or pet category, yet two states governments have simply steam rolled over our recommendations and installed him in the domestic dog act, deregulating him without recourse or consultation with us. We have mad no inroads into having him removed from vermin lists anywhere in Australia.

How very politically convenient. How we have been irked by the domestic repercussions of this, with dumped animals and their distraught owners ruining our peace.

I am sure those hard nosed farmers who each autumn commence their annual anti wild dog publicity campaigns feel that we dingo lovers deserve to be irked. They transfer their inborn hatred from the dog which maims their lambs and keeps their pockets from filling to those of us who dare to raise a pitiful cry in defense of the wild dog. Outside of lambing time(which also coincides with dingo breeding season) the dingo or wild dog just does his job as best he can, and survives as best he can on small rodents, lizards, and even grasshoppers. Not too much is heard of them in rural press reports.

Just what is the wild occurring dingo of twenty first century Australia? According to Adam O’Neill, author of “Living with the Dingo” it is the wild born, free ranging canine, which for the most part keeps to itself, or to the territory held by its family pack, in the arid or marginal areas of Australian mainland which can support sufficient prey food for a living to be made.

According to Adam, whether this animals genetic make up is 100% purely descended from unadulterated ancient stock, or whether it has had its genetic make up infiltrated by domestic dog genes here and there along the way, so long as it can live and survive and do all the things in the continuing social structure that has survived for fifty centuries in Australia, it is still entitled to be called a dingo. Adam sees the infiltration of modern dog genes as simply a healthy ongoing evolutionary process. This evolved dingo is still filling the ecological niche, and doing the same job as his forbears.

Alan Wilton, Senior Lecturer in Molecular Biology at the University of New South Wales, who has developed the current testing programme, believes that the detection over twenty tests on the microsatelite marker, of one gene commonly found in domestic dogs is of little consequence, and not necessarily a pointer to past hybridization, but that the detection of two domestic dog genes not found normally to date in dingo test samples completed, could be evidence that the animal was closer to a ¾ dingo, and perhaps should not be acceptable for continued breeding.

Such findings justify additional ongoing study to ascertain whether the appearance of a gene common to dogs is merely a legitimately shared gene passed forward from the parent common to each canine sub species, or whether it actually signifies a close up introduction of dog genes by hybridization.

Was the dingo ever specially aristocratic? I think not. I imagine the original “Eve” to have been a smallish , red, scruffy and parasite ridden , tough fishing village rat catching dog which would never have been remotely pampered or even respected by humans. This mother of the first dingo escaped her masters, those seafaring traders of ancient times, and ran off into the alien Australian bush to bear the first litter. She who had possibly seen her mate slaughtered and eaten during the long sea voyage, somehow turned from an existence of scavenging refuse and hunting ships rats to taking small native rodents, lizards and ground dwelling birds to survive, and to miraculously raise her family. She was fearful and exceedingly smart. Traits which she has passed on to those animals we call dingoes today. She evaded capture by aborigines. She learned to fear crocodiles, find water, and she taught her brood to do the same. Such is a feat which no domestic breed of dog could achieve today. Did she have a mate to accompany her and assist? We will never know. Perhaps her next litter was sired by her adolescent son, and the family moved to ever more remote areas, learning and teaching each other new skills in this strange environment, with mother nature weeding out the unfit. Somehow these survival skills have become part of the inherited instincts of the landrace we call dingo today. The special characteristics which have evolved over fifty centuries and have become part of the hereditary package are what we are discovering in the sample cells now being studied in the DNA testing laboratory. Gene CXX30 his believed to have traveled those centuries and generations and serves as the signpost of the animal which is the “ pure dingo” today.

To me, the possession of these inherited and social skills is a very large part of what makes a dingo a dingo. The ancient annual breeding behaviour, totally lost in most modern domestic breeds, the silent warnings of danger exchanged by a soft snort, the inability to bark, the catlike postures, the marathon runner’s gait, the unique muscular traits and the quirky head wagging habits, are all encapsulated in a sub- 20 kilogram athletic package, moulded by the harsh Australian environment. Such a dog is the dingo.

We have built up a comprehensive physical assessment system which has been extraordinarily reliable and continues to assist in identifying what we term “purity”. In conjunction with morphological measurements of the skull, and the latest DNA tests we have become confident we can fairly accurately say that the subject canine is a dingo and not a domestic dog. In fact to those of use close to both dingoes and domestic dogs, there is a chasm of perceptible difference.

A hybrid is more simple to define. It is a first cross animal. It is half dingo and half domestic dog. In most cases it will look very much more like the dingo parent than like the dog parent. It is highly unlikely that a wild bred hybrid will have a domestic dog mother, as domestic dogs simply lack the ability to raise a litter unaided outside of the domestic environment The dam of the first cross hybrid will almost certainly be a dingo which has visited a domestic male in his own territory, for the domestic male dog venturing into dingo territory during breeding season would almost certainly be set upon by territorial males and killed. It therefore follows that such hybrid puppies will be born not too geographically far from the residence of the sire. These animals are more likely to become the stock worriers of the future, as they range back close to where their sire is located, maybe even on the end of his responsibly restraining chain. The more remote the whelping den the more probable it will be that the dingo is pure, and the more likely that these dingoes will never become a problem to farmers. Baiting such remote areas for dogs I therefore a folly and an ecological crime of great degree.

The hybrids described above do not fit into the category of deliberately bred hybrids born in an uncontrolled domestic environment. All such animals should be subject to DNA sampling and testing. It is these animals which are more likely to become the vexation of conservation movements and farmers alike. The resulting puppies have very little chance of leading a successful life as a family pet. The genetic dominance of feral traits will in the very vast majority of cases result in a tragic forced euthanasia of the animal in its youth due to the fact that only the smallest percentage of a civilized human population will tolerate them, or be able to manage or come to understand them.

For those among the human population who have a special appreciation for this most resilient of animals the constant funding of its extermination in multi millions of dollars is anathema. We are so hell bent on annihilating each other politically that we can only sit by and witness the eco-vandalism and sob. It suits Government departments to have us polarized and dis-organised, and gives them the time they need to finish the task commenced over a century ago by the rural lobby. We are never consulted, we can only poke our bibs in after the events. We are not given stake-holder positions on the powerful “committees” which seal the dingoe’s fate. No balance of funding is forthcoming for the conservation of the dingo in captivity. Maybe because we have not asked for it! Maybe because a very small percentage of dingo people are so ego-driven that they must destroy the reputation of other dingo enthusiasts in the equation along the way. Whatever the reason, and in the absence of an organized front, we must keep blowing the whistle to the public – each and every one of us in his or her own way, and encourage those out there on the front by support, not hindrance.

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