Dingo

DINGO

For Abby and Owen Anderson

DINGO

BRAD PURCELL

© Brad Purcell 2010

All rights reserved. Except under the conditions described in the Australian Copyright Act 1968 and subsequent amendments, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, duplicating or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Contact CSIRO PUBLISHING for all permission requests.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

Purcell, Brad

Dingo / by Brad Purcell.

9780643096936 (pbk.)

Australian natural history series.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Dingo – Australia

Dingo – Behavior – Genetic aspects – Australia.

Dingo – Effect of habitat modification on – Australia.

599.772

Published by

CSIRO PUBLISHING

150 Oxford Street (PO Box 1139)

Collingwood VIC 3066

Australia

Front cover image: Jon Reid

All images by Brad Purcell unless stated otherwise

Set in 10.5/14 Sabon

Edited by Janet Walker

Cover and text design by James Kelly

Typeset by Oryx Publishing

Printed in China by 1010 Printing International Limited

CSIRO PUBLISHING publishes and distributes scientific, technical and health science books, magazines and journals from Australia to a worldwide audience and conducts these activities autonomously from the research activities of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).

The views expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of, and should not be attributed to, the publisher or CSIRO.

CONTENTS

Preface

Acknowledgements

1  Introduction

2  The dingo in Australia

3  What is a dingo and how does it differ from a domestic dog?

4  Dingo characteristics and biology

5  Hypercarnivory, sociality and territory inheritance

6  How do dingoes see Australian landscapes?

7  The role of a hypercarnivorous predator

8  Competition between humans and dingoes

9  Conserving dingoes in Australian landscapes

10 Order in the pack

References

Index

A dingo walks behind a hidden trap, in front of a hidden camera, and appears distracted by something at the nearby waterhole.

PREFACE

‘No dog’s allowed in here, son!’ said the storekeeper to Roland Breckwoldt in a supermarket in Port Augusta.

‘That’s not a dog,’ claimed Roland in reply … ‘it’s a dingo!’

‘That’s okay then.’

Such is life for this Australian icon. Friend and foe. We want to keep them … but we also want to kill them. We want to hear their lonesome chorus in the evening, but we want to hear the trapper say, ‘I killed that dog that was pestering your sheep.’

Roland Breckwoldt was the first to publish the science and the speculation about both sides of the argument. After all, the dingo that killed the sheep deserves defence since it was possibly acting much like the sheep farmer and trying to provide food for its family. It is this competition that drives the controversial culture about dingoes, and it is only we humans that can make the choice to kill dingoes or to conserve them.

Two questions: 1) ‘did the dingo take the Chamberlains’ baby?’ and 2) ‘are there any pure dingoes left?’ are the most commonly asked by people when they find out I research dingoes. It is unfortunate, however, that after 40–50 years of dingo research in Australia those answers are all people seek, and that a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ is unavailable for both questions. I wasn’t born until exactly one year after the baby incident had hit the newsstands on 18 August 1980 so I can only provide comment using available literature about the event. The most plausible explanation for the first question, however, is that a wild dingo had become habituated in the area due to the frequency of human visitors. Azaria Chamberlain, the baby, was possibly murmuring or crying in the tent and one of the local dingoes seized her in the same way that they would if they found a lone or injured joey. Aborigines may have had similar experiences with thylacines and dingoes over millennia, thus creating the rule for their children to carry a firestick with them when they left the campfire at night. Apparently they would tell their kids that it would protect them from evil spirits, and in totemistic religions, evil spirits may take the form of an animal, much like the dingo.

Question two, however, has to be answered rhetorically: ‘What is a pure dingo?’

Ninety per cent of the time, a pure dingo apparently is a sandy coloured animal with white paws and a white tail tip. The other 10% of the time the questioners either listen with interest whilst I explain the problems when using coat colour, skull measurements or genetics to define ‘purity’, or they agree with my question: ‘yeah … what is pure?’ Adolph Hitler once attempted to create a pure race of humans based on the colour of their hair and eyes, and this eventually helped to cause World War II. So what basis do humans have to define any animals as pure? The most ironic part about Hitler’s definition of pure is that the pure gene for blue eyes was a genetic mutation that occurred between 5000–6000 years ago. Does that make ‘purity’ a genetic mutation? If it does, is not the concept of purity an illusion?

This book has been written to provide a new understanding of the dingo, Australia’s wild dog. Records of dingoes prior to those referred to in this book were generally limited, anecdotal and potentially biased diary entries from European settlers that have remained influential in dingo and wild dog management programs. Dingoes are trapped between the stature of being: 1) an infamous pest animal; 2) a spiritual totemic creature; and 3) a potential keystone species and tool to reverse some impacts of European colonisation on Australian fauna and flora. These three points encapsulate the controversial existence of dingoes. If the dingoes in question are causing problems, then they are referred to as wild dogs and have to be controlled (the politically correct way to say killed or culled) under Australian legislation. Alternatively if the wild dogs or dingoes in question are useful or hail from an iconic stature, then they are referred to as dingoes and afforded a level of protection by legislation and the public. Since only Dr Doolittle and Dr Harry Cooper can talk to the animals, then it is all the more important for society at large to have an understanding of the dingo because we can’t expect them to understand us.

Ultimately Roland summarised the role of the dingo most aptly at the conclusion of his foreword:

‘Perhaps knowing and accepting the dingo is but part of reaching a much larger understanding of our place in the Australian environment.’

I hope that this book can help to do just that: show what the dingo is or has become, and show what we can learn from its story.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many people who assisted me during my dingo research are deserving of special thanks. First of all, Professor Robert Claude Mulley. Talk about philosophy. Rob was my principal supervisor during my doctoral research and apart from finding in him an arsenal of industry experience I also found a strong and supportive mentor and friend. It doesn’t get any better than that! Co-supervisors Robert Close from the University of Western Sydney and Peter Fleming from the Vertebrate Pest Research Unit at Orange also imparted constructive criticism of the highest quality. Their enthusiasm and support has been endless and it was an honour to work with them.

The University of Western Sydney deserves many thanks for the research opportunities, intercontinental experiences and logistical support to write this book. My PhD project originally was envisaged in 2004 as a flagship project for the then new animal science degree and this book is credit to the foresight at the time, of the Dean of the College of Health and Science, Professor Mick Wilson and the Head of School, Robert Mulley. Thanks also to Professor John Bartlett, technical officer Sue Cusbert and the friendly and supportive staff and postgraduate colleagues, especially Jack Pascoe.

Research of this nature could never work without collaboration from stakeholders. Therefore I am grateful to the NSW Parks and Wildlife Division of the Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water, the Sydney Catchment Authority and the Cumberland Livestock Health and Pest Authority for funding and in-kind contributions including field accommodation, aerial services and boat services. The enlightened perspectives and enthusiasm of Andrew Glover, the man who conceived the idea for the dingo project in the Blue Mountains, became the backbone of its stability. Duncan Scott-Lawson, Andrew Simson, Glenn Meade, Brian Waldron, Kim de Govrik, Chris Banffy, Loretta Gallen, Steven Mills and Geoff Ross are just few of the staff I wish to thank personally. Thanks for the valiant efforts of dog trappers Bill Morris, Mick Davis and Andrew McDougall.

Many thanks to Barbara Triggs (Dead Finish), Justyna Paplinska and George Sofrinidi (Genetic Technologies), Alan Wilton (University of New South Wales), Oleg Nicetic and Michael Dingley (University of Western Sydney) and to Ben Allen (South Australian Arid Lands Natural Resource Management Board) for scat, genetic, statistic, skull and movement analyses. There were many volunteers who assisted me with field work, too numerous to name individually here, so I thank you as a group.

I am also indebted for the constant support of family and friends. My parents, Bryan and Vicki Purcell, my sister Kristy Anderson, my brother Simon Purcell and my brother-in-law Aran Anderson were always encouraging. I wish to thank Kerrie McGuigan for her support and also her parents Wendy and Anthony McGuigan. My gratitude is extended to my friends, particularly Stephen Wigmore for reviewing a draft of this book, Josh Edwards and Glenn Purcell for assisting me with some illustrations and to Peter Jamieson for providing accommodation while I wrote the manuscript. Thanks to Shannon Plummer, Aran Anderson, Bryan Purcell, Rob Mulley, Lee Parker and Nick Alexander for providing outstanding photographs.

Finally I thank Nick Alexander and CSIRO for approaching me to write this book and supporting me through the experience. Thanks also to Professor Chris Dickman for his support in my chosen career.

Brad Purcell

1

INTRODUCTION

Australia is a continent of contrasts with extreme weather patterns and many varied landscapes, ecosystems and animals. The dingo Canis lupus dingo is one of few Australian species to inhabit the entire mainland, because others are limited in their ability to adapt to the different environments. Unlike Australian marsupials, however, dingoes are a placental mammal and a canid, and canid species are landscape specialists. Following the introduction of the dingo to Australia 4000–5000 years ago, canids were the first terrestrial carnivore to be unsurpassed in world distribution. Like most large carnivores, dingoes sometimes come into conflict with humans and managing dingoes can often be controversial.

Large carnivorous species are probably the most revered in all of nature. In ancient human civilisations, some carnivores were seen as spiritual totems, such as the gray wolf Canis lupus lupus by American Indians, and the dingo by Australian Aborigines. In modern European civilisations, however, these two species in particular were portrayed in fables such as Little Red Riding Hood and Wombat Stew as murderous villains or as cunning impostors respectively. The fear that carnivores instil in their prey and in their competitors has created numerous defensive behaviours throughout evolution. Although only one-third the weight of its ancestor, the 60 kg gray wolf, the dingo is not exempt from being feared as a deadly predator. Kangaroos form large mobs where sentinel animals appear to position themselves at vantage points around the mob to keep watch for any terrestrial predators like the dingo. Competing species such as humans, have invented methods as simple as fences or as elaborate as poisons to not only deter but to destroy other carnivores.

Coming to understand an animal like the Australian dingo is more challenging than simply reading about them or seeing them in a zoo. Dingoes after all are an iconic Australian mammal, similar to kangaroos and koalas. They may be depicted on postcards and stamps, on instant lottery scratchies, in brochures, children’s books and even on television and in movies. In contrast, dingoes are persecuted daily by many present-day Australians for both being a higher order predator and for killing introduced domestic herbivores fenced by sparse wire adjacent to dingo habitat (see Figure 1.1). If dingoes are not being shot at, trapped or poisoned, they are being caged or isolated in zoos and breeding sanctuaries. Millions of dollars are spent annually to control the effects of dingoes and other wild dogs on livestock enterprises. Dingoes were seen as such an immediate threat to livestock production in Australia that the dingo barrier fence, the longest fence on earth, which extends approximately 5400 km through Queensland and South Australia and stands 1.8 m tall, was built between 1880 and 1885 to exclude dingoes from preferred livestock grazing areas in the south-east.

Figure 1.1 Leghold traps are usually set in the humus layer of soil under a scent post. Dingoes unknowingly stand on the treadle when they move in to refresh their scent and are shot by the trapper. Image: Lee Parker

Apart from livestock predation, dingoes have also been blamed for the extirpation of the thylacine Thylacinus cynocephalus and the Tasmanian devil Sarcophilus harisii from mainland Australia, and for stealing babies! Although that controversial murder trial in the 1980s received international recognition, dingoes continue to attract tourists to places like Fraser Island off the coast of Queensland, where nine-year-old boy Clinton Gage was killed in 2001. Dingo control programs to protect livestock enterprises, and people, are now being coordinated at federal, state and local levels of government because: a) dingoes may freely travel between states; and b) control programs have never completely fulfilled their duty to actually control some populations. In two studies, livestock predation by dingoes actually increased after control programs had been implemented and no known economic benefit to nearby livestock enterprises could be quantified by the researchers. The information presented to this point, however, says less about dingoes and more about how humans interact with dingoes.

Understanding the Australian dingo or any animal for that matter requires some on-ground experience … and a little intuition. When I began my research on dingoes in the Burragorang Valley in the Blue Mountains, one of the caretakers at the ghost town known as Yerranderie told me that he once had that instinctual feeling when walking to one of the old silver mines. So he turned and looked at the ledge behind him where a dingo was watching him walk past. Then in August 2005, I was on a short field trip with Fairfax media photographer Jon Reid and had a similar experience. We had staked out at the top dam, a spot that was frequented by two or more dingo packs, from about 1 pm until around 3 pm when three dingoes and four pups strolled past. Once they had finished drinking, playing and had walked out of the area, we tracked them back to their den and tried our hardest to sneak up on the pack but they saw us before we could get a clear photograph. Nevertheless we walked to the den, an ex-wombat burrow, and were standing on the edge when Jon said, ‘I swear we’re being watched’. So I looked around and noticed that the dominant female, Makileiko, was sitting on an embankment less than 15 metres away watching us. Once we had made eye contact, she slowly slinked away up the hill and out of sight without so much as a whimper.

Previous to that experience, Makileiko was the first dingo that I had the fleeting glimpse of in the wild. It is known as the fleeting glimpse because it is about all most people get to see of a wild dingo. Her name means ‘eyes’ in Gundangarra, the local Aboriginal language, aptly so because she always appeared to be making observations when photographed by our hidden motion-sensing cameras. Makileiko was a perfect ginger colour with