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ambience: Dingoes howling
In Australia, the wild dog known as the dingo may soon be gone forever. But it’s not your typical extinction. The dingo has been interbreeding with domestic dogs at a very high rate. I’m Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet. Biologists in Australia are having an increasingly hard time telling the dingo and the domestic dog apart. Lana Langdale is a keeper of Australian Mammals at the Taronga Zoo.
“The pure dingo is disappearing in Australia. Just recently they’ve found that they can discern a dingo from a domestic dog with the DNA. The other way that they used to do it was by looking at the skull after the animal was dead and, and there are differences between a dingo skull and a domestic dog’s skull. Their teeth — they have longer canines — and they, they have a longer muzzle normally than a domestic dog. Because they, they’re out there doing the wild hunting behavior, their, their tools of the trade which are their mouths and their teeth, are are still very well developed for that hunting.”
From a few feet away though you might not never know the difference between a Dingo and a dog.
“Dingoes look like a medium sized dog. They range in color, but their main color is a yellow or ginger color. Uh, they can be white or they also can be brown or black with tan tips on them. They have very large triangular forward face and ears. They usually have a short coat. but the Alpine dingoes will have a very thick furry coat in wintertime. They’ve got a long tail that kind of curls upwards and they use that to communicate different things to each other.”
If you’d like to hear about our new Pulse of the Planet CD, please visit our website at pulseplanet.com. Pulse of the Planet is presented with support provided by the National Science Foundation. I’m Jim Metzner.
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