Dingo Tracking - angells-au

On this particular day I was with my father in the old WW2 Willeys Army Jeep and we were out checking Dingo Traps around the station. There were at least three others with us at the time and we came across a trap that was missing. Tracks showed that a dog had been caught in the trap and it had made off with it still attached.

My father was driving and we began following the tracks looking for the dog and the missing trap. We were driving through sandhill country and over vegetation when the rear left hand tyre was punctured. In the bush you need to be prepared for any and all mishaps so a puncture was never going to be a real issue, except, the Jack was not to be found in the vehicle.

Not one to be beaten by such an oversight, my father had the perfect solution. I cant remember who it was that was sitting over that wheel in the back but he was a fairly big man and consequently my father blamed his size for the puncture so as he changed the tyre he made this bloke lift the back of the jeep so he could remove the flat tyre and put the good one on.

We continued on and found the mortally wounded dog, recovered the trap and station life went on.

Dingoes

Canis dingo

The world's remaining Dingo (Canis familiaris) populations are concentrated in Austalia and south-east Asia.

In particular it is found in the islands and mainland of southern and southeast Asia including Papua New Guinea (formerly C. hallstromi), Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Burma, Thailand and southern China. Thailand presently has the purest populations of Dingoes. The Dingo is found throughout mainland Australia except where excluded from sheep grazing areas by the famous dingo fence in the east and the west.

Most closely related to the semi-domestic Dog of South-east Asia, it seems to have arrived in Australia about 3,500 years ago. Some Dingoes have a semi-domestic relationship with Aborigines (who came to Australia at least 40,000 years ago and could not have introduced the animal).

A subspecies of the domestic Dog, the Dingo cannot be reliably distinguished on any external characteristics. It is a primitice dog that evolved from a wolf 6,000- 10,000 years ago. It is often ginger-colored with white points to the ears and tail, but it can be black as well. It differs from the domestic dog in that the Dingo breeds only once a year and it seldom barks.

Dingoes (along with dogs and cross-breeds) are abundant in Aboriginal communities. They have been in Australia for thousands of years and are represented in the rock-art sites around Laura, near Olkola country. The Dingo figures prominently in certain stories.

The average adult Dingo in Australia stands 570 mm at the shoulder, is 1230 mm long from nose to tail-tip, and it weighs 15 kg; Dingoes are smaller in Asia.

It is an inhabitant of woodland and grassland, often the edge of forest, feeding on the Rabbit, as well as on a wide range of terrestrial marsupials, rodents, reptiles and sheep. Macropod marsupials are the most common element of diet in all studies (Australia).

Population density of the Dingo is a function of prey availability. It hunts in packs for large prey, singly when feeding on small animals.

Time of mating: Mar.- Apr. (autumn to early winter in Australia); Average number in a litter: 1-10, mean 5.4 (Australia). Females become sexually mature at 2 years and have only one estrus period each year, although some do not breed in droughts. Mating occurs from autumn to early winter and litters of three or four are born from late winter to spring.

Says Dingo expert, Laurie Corbett: "Dingoes do kill and eat cattle, sheep and other stock; they always have and always will. Pastoralists have so feared Dingoes that many millions of dollars have been spent over the past 150 years or so trying to kill them or exclude them from pastoral areas. The longest fence in the world is a momument to that. Probably more has been written about the Dingo wars than any other aspect of 'dingology', yet only two facts stand out: all the effort has been extremely expensive and, by and large, it has not worked.

Corbett says for sheep farmers there probably are no better solutions. The fencing seems to be the most practical solution, particularly if areas adjacent to sheep paddocks retain adequate native species to support Dingo populations, or if appropriate buffer zones (10-20 km wide) surrounding sheep paddocks are maintained.

There is compelling circumstantial evidence that the Dingo was responsible for the extermination of the Thylacine and Tasmanian Devil on the Australian mainland.

Created on 09/10/2008 12:38 AM by Rod
Updated on 09/10/2008 12:41 AM by Rod