Dingo

Guest Reviewer: David Hourigan

Latin Name: Canis familiaris dingo
Habitat: Australian outback, some crazy people's backyards.

First Impressions:

These are tough animals. They even look tough - kinda squinty eyes, a little shifty, like they'd knife you if they knew they could get away with it. Lean and athletic. You don't mess with dingoes.

The dingo's most famous moment was when one snatched baby Azaria Chamberlain from a tent near Ayers Rock in 1980. The baby was never found. Who can forget the chilling cry, delivered in an excruciatingly bad Australian accent by Meryl Streep, "A dingo stole my baby!"? (Incidentally, this came in very useful as a general excuse for many an Aussie schoolboy in the 1980s - "A dingo stole my homework!";"A dingo stole my sports kit!" etc). So the dingo is an animal which is not above a little human snacking, while also contributing to a nation's store of both cheesy catchphrases and handy excuses - what more can you ask for?

"A dingo cut my hair!"

We also had to erect a "dingo fence" here in Australia, to keep the wild dingoes in the barren outback and away from our livestock. "So what?" I hear you ask. "My Gran has a fence to keep her Yorkshire Terrier in her yard." The dingo fence is 5000km long. To put that in perspective, the Great Wall of China is about the same length. An animal which inspires the same kind of architectural endeavours as Ghenghis Khan and the Mongol Horde - you can’t help but be impressed.

The great dingo wall of Australia.

Scientific Stuff:

According to the www.canids.org:

"Dingoes can be distinguished from the domestic dog (canis familiaris familiaris) and dingo-dog hybrids by their larger canines and carnassial teeth, differences in skull bones, and the pattern of breeding."

Apparently the trick is that they only mate once a year. While this is probably a bit of a bummer for the dingoes, this has to be a good thing if you are considering one as a pet. Because let's face it, it gets pretty embarrassing when a normal dog is "in the mood", and you don't want to try and stop an animal with carnassial teeth and larger canines humping your leg more than once a year.

Good Pet/Bad Pet:

+ Unusual
+ They can climb trees, evening out the odds for the neighbourhood dog-chases-cat contests.
+ Their nearest cousin, and I swear I'm not making this up, is the "New Guinea Singing Dog", which is inestimably cool.
+ Only mate once a year

- Teeth
- More Teeth
- Carnassial teeth

New Guinea Singing Dog

Overall, dingoes are way ahead in the cool and unusual stakes.

Celebrity Owners:

There are actually people here in Australia who do keep dingoes as pets, but they tend to be people who answer to the name "Stumpy" or "Four Finger Jones".

Mark 'Chopper' Read.
This man looks like a textbook dingo owner to us

Overall Dingo Score: 8.9/10

David

Thanks so much for your review, which has put a big smile on our faces. Not actually because we love dingos, although we're now far more partial than we were before, but because we've been dying to put a picture of Chopper on the site since day one, and thanks to you we now can.

You're absolutely right of course - dingos are thoroughly excellent animals. We think there's something genuinely refreshing about being reminded that not all dogs have been tamed by humans to sit and fetch sticks, and that wild dogs still exist.

You can just imagine the look of complete incomprehension on a dingo's face when he spots a poodle on the other side of the fence.

Dingos are real dogs.

- Theo and Max