Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Dingoes Do Sometimes Eat Babies

NYT (via nc links):
Much of the change, Dr. Peace says, comes from public encounters with dingoes on Fraser Island, a nature reserve visited by hundreds of thousands of tourists yearly. Starting in the ’90s, minor human-dingo incidents started worrying managers of the reserve, and in 2001 two dingoes killed a 9-year-old boy, Clinton Gage, and injured his brother. “That was really the game-changer,” Dr. Peace said. There were calls for the extermination of dingoes on the island, which did not happen, but rangers kill any dingoes believed to pose a danger.
Dingoes are generally classified as a subspecies of wolf, Canis lupus dingo, although in the past they have been classified as a subspecies of dog and as a separate species. Physically, they resemble a generic, medium-size dog, about 40 pounds, usually tan-colored, with pricked ears and a bushy tail.
They do not have some of the physical signs of domestication found in many dog breeds, like barking as adults. They breed once a year, like wolves, and when undisturbed they have a stable pack structure topped by one male-female pair, the only ones in the pack that reproduce.
There are tons of coyotes around here, but I haven't heard of any attacking kids, even though they weigh about 40 pounds too.  Hopefully, it will stay that way.

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