Dingo

The dingo (either included in the species Canis dingo, or considered one of the following independent taxa: Canis familiaris dingo, Canis familiaris or Canis lupus dingo) is an ancient (basal) lineage of dog found in Australia. Its taxonomic classification is debated as indicated by the variety of scientific names presently applied in different publications. It is variously considered a form of domestic dog not warranting recognition as a subspecies, a subspecies of dog or wolf, or a full species in its own right.

The dingo is a medium-sized canine that possesses a lean, hardy body adapted for speed, agility, and stamina. The dingo's three main coat colourations are light ginger or tan, black and tan, or creamy white. The skull is wedge-shaped and appears large in proportion to the body. The dingo is closely related to the New Guinea singing dog: their lineage split early from the lineage that led to today's domestic dogs, and can be traced back through Maritime Southeast Asia to Asia. The oldest remains of dingoes in Australia are around 3,500 years old.

A dingo pack usually consists of a mated pair, their offspring from the current year, and sometimes offspring from the previous year.

The name "dingo" comes from the Dharug language used by the Indigenous Australians of the Sydney area. The first British colonists to arrive in Australia in 1788 established a settlement at Port Jackson and noted "dingoes" living with Indigenous Australians. The name was first recorded in 1789 by Watkin Tench in his Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay:

The only domestic animal they have is the dog, which in their language is called Dingo, and a good deal resembles the fox dog of England. These animals are equally shy of us, and attached to the natives. One of them is now in the possession of the Governor, and tolerably well reconciled to his new master.

Related Dharug words include "ting-ko" meaning "bitch", and "tun-go-wo-re-gal" meaning "large dog". The dingo has different names in different indigenous Australian languages, such as boolomo, dwer-da, joogoong, kal, kurpany, maliki, mirigung, noggum, papa-inura, and wantibirri. Some authors propose that a difference existed between camp dingoes and wild dingoes as they had different names among indigenous tribes. The people of the Yarralin, Northern Territory, region frequently call those dingoes that live with them walaku, and those that live in the wilderness ngurakin. They also use the name walaku to refer to both dingoes and dogs. The colonial settlers of New South Wales wrote using the name dingo only for camp dogs. It is proposed that in New South Wales the camp dingoes only became wild after the colonial destruction of Aboriginal society.

Dogs associated with indigenous people were first recorded by Jan Carstenszoon in the Cape York Peninsula area in 1623. In 1699, Captain William Dampier visited the coast of what is now Western Australia and recorded that "my men saw two or three beasts like hungry wolves, lean like so many skeletons, being nothing but skin and bones". In 1788, the First Fleet arrived in Botany Bay under the command of Australia's first colonial governor, Arthur Phillip, who took ownership of a dingo and in his journal made a brief description with an illustration of the "Dog of New South Wales". In 1793, based on Phillip's brief description and illustration, the "Dog of New South Wales" was classified by Friedrich Meyer as Canis dingo.

In 1999, a study of the maternal lineage through the use of mitochondrial DNA (mDNA) as a genetic marker indicates that the dingo and New Guinea singing dog developed at a time when human populations were more isolated from each other. In the third edition of Mammal Species of the World, published in 2005, the mammalogist W. Christopher Wozencraft listed under the wolf Canis lupus its wild subspecies, and proposed two additional subspecies: "familiaris Linnaeus, 1758 [domestic dog]" and "dingo Meyer, 1793 [domestic dog]". Wozencraft included hallstromi—the New Guinea singing dog—as a taxonomic synonym for the dingo. He referred to the mDNA study as one of the guides in forming his decision. The inclusion of familiaris and dingo under a "domestic dog" clade has been noted by other mammalogists, and their classification under the wolf debated.