Although dingoes are the greatest terrestrial predators in Australia, there has been much discussion and uncertainty around their evolutionary history for many years. According to recent research, they share genetic traits with both contemporary domestic dogs and wolves.
La Trobe University in Melbourne announced that researchers sequenced the genome of a pure dingo puppy found alive in the central Australian desert. The pup's DNA serves as a key intermediary between wolves (Canis lupus) and domestic dogs (Canis lupus familiaris), shedding light on canine evolution.
The results provide far more precise information about the evolution of the dingo, according to a statement from study co-author Bill Ballard, a professor of evolutionary genomics at La Trobe University. In addition to being intriguing from a scientific standpoint, he pointed out that this created new avenues for tracking their well-being and guaranteeing their long-term survival.
It is unclear where these ancient canines were in the domestication process when they first arrived in Australia; however, scientists estimate that humans transported the progenitors of contemporary dingoes there between 5,000 and 8,500 years ago. For thousands of years, dingoes were kept apart from other canines, since modern dog breeds were not brought to Australia until 1788.
Since the enigmatic Tasmanian tigers (Thylacinus cynocephalus) receded from the vast expanses of mainland Australia no less than two millennia past, the formidable dingoes—sovereigns of the predatory realm—have reigned unchallenged at the zenith of Australia's intricate food web. As chronicled by the venerable International Union for Conservation of Nature, these striped marsupial specters endured in the secluded wilds of Tasmania until the fateful year of 1936. The erudite scholars of the Australian Museum postulate that the relentless competition for sustenance between dingoes and Tasmanian tigers may have woven an insidious thread into the tragic tapestry of the latter's extinction.
Dingoes evolved in Australia to eat reptiles and marsupials like kangaroos. Unlike most domestic dogs, dingoes, like wolves, have only one AMY2B gene copy, limiting starch digestion and favoring a high-protein diet. Domestic dogs have multiple AMY2B copies, adapting them to starch-rich diets similar to humans.
Their precarious position has been further entangled by the rampant interbreeding of dingoes with feral canines—domestic dogs that have forsaken the confines of human habitation for the untamed wild. A pervasive hybridization between dingoes and domestic dogs now unfolds across the land, a phenomenon that, as elucidated by a 2015 study in the esteemed journal Molecular Ecology, threatens to imperil the very survival of the dingo and irrevocably transmute its role within the delicate tapestry of the Australian ecosystem.