Australian Dingo May Be World’s Oldest Dog

Just about everything in Australia seems to be impossibly old and now you can add the continents native dogs to that list as well:

Australia’s iconic dingo may be the world’s oldest breed of dog, according a major new DNA study that is likely to boost conservation efforts.

The international study has found the dingo and its close relation, the rare New Guinea singing dog, bear the closest genetic similarity to wolves of all breeds tested.

The research, published in science journal Nature, appears to confirm widely held theories about the dingo’s history. It involved testing nearly 1,000 dogs of 85 different breeds as well as hundreds of wolves.

“This gives us a huge weight of evidence supporting the theory that the dingo is quite distinct from all modern dog breeds,” said joint author Alan Wilton, of Sydney’s University of New South Wales.

“It’s a bit of information that could be important to the conservation issue. If it’s distinct from domestic dogs there may be scientific reasons for conserving the dingo.”

Dingoes and the singing dog, named for its distinctive multi-pitched howl, have developed in isolation from other breeds for thousands of years. Dingoes were introduced to Australia from Indonesia about 5,000 years ago.  [AFP]

The dingoes actually are nice looking dogs, however Australians rarely see them because of the construction of the  “dingo fence“, which is 3,488 miles long and protects the most populated areas of Australia where the majority of the sheep farming takes place from the dingoes. The length of this fence makes it the world’s longest fence.

This fence limits the dingoes to mostly living out in the remote outback though they can be found along the tropical east coast in isolated areas such as Fraser Island.  I actually took a picture of a dingo visiting our camp site in the Northern Territory which is where many of these dingoes live.  They are beautiful looking dogs that hopefully continue to be a part of the diverse wildlife on the Australian continent.