Ditch dingo myths, or risk extinction: New book spotlights Aussie apex predator
For decades in Australia, dingo research was shaped by one question: how can we kill them more effectively?
Now, CQUniversity animal behaviour researcher Dr Bradley Smith has brought together emerging research, genetic science, cultural knowledge and the long history of human-dingo relations for a comprehensive new book examining Australia’s largest terrestrial predator.
Dr Smith will launch Canis dingo: Understanding Australia’s Apex Predator at DingoFest, a one-of-a-kind celebration bringing together leading scientists, conservationists, Traditional Owners and passionate wildlife advocates at Federation Square in Melbourne on Sunday 30 August.
In Canis dingo, he asks a very different question: how can we co-exist with dingoes, and what will we lose if we cannot?
A history of hostility
A mine site in Western Australia’s Pilbara offered Dr Smith a rare opportunity to observe free-ranging dingoes in their natural habitat, while also studying how they lived alongside people.
He was excited to observe packs and to see pups at breeding season, but that excitement was quickly deflated.
“One miner who’d had his lunchbox stolen from the back of his ute told me, ‘They’re a bloody pest. Why don’t we just get rid of lot of them?’” he said.
The comment reflected a broader attitude that has shaped dingo management since European colonisation. Wildlife is tolerated only while it does not interfere with human activities.
“Throughout the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, the CSIRO dingo research program was explicitly trying to understand: how can we kill dingos better?” he explained.
“The work was funded by the livestock industry, and one research publication even summed up the approach as ‘know thine enemy’.”
The controversy in science and public discourse remains to this day.
Canis dingo draws on emerging research, historical records and Dr Smith’s own fieldwork to tackle dingo misconceptions and myths.
While the science has advanced, Dr Smith warns that continued misinformation places dingo populations at risk, contributes to ecosystem degradation and fails to recognise their profound cultural importance to many First Nations peoples.
What is a dingo?
The identity of the dingo has long been obscured by inconsistent and sometimes contradictory labels.
Across Australia, dingoes may be recognised as native wildlife under one law while being classified as pests or grouped with “wild dogs” under another.
These classifications have helped justify widespread baiting, trapping and shooting, regional eradication policies, and the construction of the world’s longest fence to restrict their movements.
In Canis dingo, Dr Smith argues that the dingo’s identity cannot be determined by any single label. Instead, he draws together cultural, ecological, legal, physical and genetic evidence showing that:
- Thousands of years of natural selection in Australia have shaped the dingo into a distinct wild canid, ecologically adapted to the Australian landscape and different from both its ancestors and modern free-ranging domestic dogs.
- Dingoes are not simply domestic dogs living in the wild. They differ in their anatomy, brain size, reproductive biology, behaviour, cognition and ecology. Research led by Dr Smith, for example, found that dingoes have considerably larger brains relative to body size than domestic dogs. The study involved filling the cranial cavities of 128 deceased free-ranging dingo skulls with mustard seeds to estimate brain size, with most specimens drawn from the CSIRO collection.
- Genetic research published over the past five years has overturned the widespread belief that most dingoes are heavily hybridised with modern domestic dogs, revealing that genetically intact dingo populations persist across Australia.
- The Commonwealth Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 defines a native species as one present in Australia before AD 1400. Having lived here for thousands of years, dingoes are native under federal law.
- Dingoes are among the animals most frequently represented in Aboriginal creation stories and cultural traditions, appearing as spiritual beings, guides and symbols of profound connection to Country.
Dr Smith is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at CQUniversity, the Scientific Director of the Australian Dingo Foundation, a member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature dingo working group, and has been a regular media commentator on dingo management.
Passionate about animal-human interactions since his first student research with captive dingoes, Dr Smith’s PhD compared dingoes to domestic dogs and to wolves.
In the 20 years since, his body of research demonstrates how dingoes are distinct from domestic dogs, and much more akin to a wolf, unique to Australia, and even a species Australians should be proud of.
Professor Brian Hare, an evolutionary anthropologist at Duke University in the US, and New York Times bestselling author, says Canis dingo is “this century’s most important book on the relationship between humans and animals… (and) essential reading for anyone who cares about canines.”
Canis dingo: Understanding Australia’s apex predator is out now with CSIRO Publishing.
