• Welcome to BirdForum, the internet's largest birding community with thousands of members from all over the world. The forums are dedicated to wild birds, birding, binoculars and equipment and all that goes with it.

    Please register for an account to take part in the discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.
ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Re-domestication of the dingo (1 Viewer)

Well, dingos, despite their popularity in Australian culture, are just feral dogs. They even arrived not with first natives 40,000 years ago, but with later sailors 4,000 years ago.

The article repeats the theory that dogs domesticated themselves by scavenging on human rubbish. I think there is no knowledge whatsoever what process domesticated dogs. Especially, primitive societies do not produce regularly meat waste. Normally, all protein from a hunted animal is used in some way. Also, a wolf near human habitation would be likely quickly killed for fur or as danger to children and stored food.
 
Also, a wolf near human habitation would be likely quickly killed for fur or as danger to children and stored food.

Speaking of unsupported assertions.... after all, something happened to domesticate them, and the suggestion seems to be from the research that it takes more than just adopting newborn puppies. Without studying the actual data, we've no means of knowing whether the researchers have found witness marks on midden bones indicating wolves definitely did chew on them - in which case their assertions would be decidedly not unsupported.

In addition to which, I think sometimes we forget how limited the ability of early man to kill a fast-moving, intelligent, alert predator probably was.

Driven off: maybe. Taught through bitter experience to keep its distance: maybe. Accepted as a nearby regular on the grounds that a territorial animal will thereby limit the number of untaught continually dangerous newcomers? Not out of the question!

But I agree that definite evidence is lacking. Which is why studies reproducing the events from scratch or near-scratch are valuable.

I must admit looking at the headline I thought yep, and next week scientist claims round thing with pole through it potentially useful - but the article was in fact Quite Interesting.

John
 
Australian dingo as a valid and distinct taxon

Paper:

Bradley P. Smith, Kylie M. Cairns, Justin W. Adams, Thomas M. Newsome, Melanie Fillios, Eloïse C. Déaux, William C. H. Parr, Mike Letnic, Lily M. Van Eeden, Robert G. Appleby, Corey J. A. Bradshaw, Peter Savolainen, Euan G. Ritchie, Dale G. Nimmo, Clare Archer-Lean, Aaron C. Greenville, Christopher R. Dickman, Lyn Watson, Katherine E. Moseby, Tim S. Doherty, Arian D. Wallach, Damian S. Morrant, Mathew S. Crowther. 2019. Taxonomic status of the Australian dingo: the case for Canis dingo Meyer, 1793. Zootaxa 4564 (1): 173. DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4564.1.6

More details (press release):

Flinders University. Australian dingo is a unique Australian species in its own right. ScienceDaily, 5 March 2019.
 
Warning! This thread is more than 5 years ago old.
It's likely that no further discussion is required, in which case we recommend starting a new thread. If however you feel your response is required you can still do so.

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top