p. 15 | Bloodthirsty Dingo

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Oct 6, 1909

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 36, No. 39.

Bloodthirsty Dingo

THERE are some who believe that certain of the wild dogs, like the Australian dingo—“yellow dog dingo, always hungry, dusty in the sun”—are reversions to the wild state of a race once tame, just as the pariah dogs of various countries have traveled half the road toward becoming wild animals again.

As one sees the dingo here in the gardens it looks not merely like a domesticated dog, but like a dog of a distinctly engaging and amicable kind. The dingo’s character belies its gentle looks. “Quarrelsome, sly, and treacherous,” an Australian naturalist has called it. So sly it is that according to Mr. Beddard (in “The Cambridge Natural History”) it feigns death “with such persistence that an individual has been known to be partly flayed before moving;” and so treacherous that in the days when dingoes were more commonly kept as pets by the colonists than, as a result of bitter experience, is the case to-day, it was no unusual thing for the dog which had been brought up with every tenderness from puppyhood, to turn suddenly on its master or mistress, or what was more frequent, when left in temporary charge of an empty house, to seize the opportunity to raid the sheepfold or the poultry-runs.

On such occasions it “ravens” even as the wolf, killing not to satisfy its hunger, but in the unrestrainable fury of a brute instinct, so that given time enough it will not leave one fowl or one sheep alive. That it does not need much time, moreover, is shown by the statement of Thomas Ward that “one dingo in the course of a few hours has been known to destroy several scores of sheep.” For its fighting ability the same authority declares it to be a match for most domestic dogs of double its size.

When wild it hunts in packs which are said sometimes to include as many as a hundred individuals, tho from six to a dozen is the common number; and the only Australian animal which it is uncertain if the pack can ever pull down is (in spite of Mr. Kipling) the “old man” kangaroo.—London Times.