#dingo behaviour

[forthedingoes]

Most dingoes would be far too timid to attempt this, the largest prey dingoes naturally hunt in groups are kangaroos. But, the fact these dingoes weren’t actually hunting was probably the reason they were game to harass the herd. If they had been serious, and got within striking range, I don’t think the dingoes would have lasted long. This play is practice in co-ordinating hunting skills, but there is ecological value in them moving the herd around and stressing them. This is also seen with dingoes harassing brumbies and wild pig populations, forcing them to move on and reduce their damage to the land through compaction, erosion and consumption of vegetation and water resources. They may occasionally bring down sick or dying large prey, or very small young piglets, but dingoes are better scavengers than hunters of large prey that can easily overpower them. 

[forthedingoes]

To those who are afraid dingoes want to eat them. 

Listen... This is what you’re dealing with. An animal that, after a lifetime of human coexistence, who is so tame she has a heated blanket, has a mighty spook about that little spideywebshadowthing on the wall. She dragged me in there to investigate and make sure she’s not going to die. By that I mean she came running, did her panic cough, then paced outside the hall until I went in first.

calm yourselves, seriously. 

Wild is not synonymous with vicious or dangerous ...  it mostly means they are scared of their own fucking shadow. Or the shadow of a spiderweb, apparently. 

[forthedingoes]

Magical Land Of Oz: Series 1 Episode 3 Human Shift

The force of human induced change has been rapid and dramatic, so animal populations have reacted in rapid and dramatic ways. In this episod

This is BRILLIANT! Oh my. Ok. Breathing. Seriously, if you don’t have iview it’s worth getting the app just for this series, but I’m truly so happy to have seen the segment on the dingoes. They’re living in WA on a mining site, as a happy, stable kin group with parents and siblings looking after eachother. They are healthy, unstressed, wild and not tame or dependent on humans at all, regardless of living near them. This is some of the best footage of natural behaviour I’ve ever seen, I dream of a documentary series just about them. On a day when all is not well for dingoes, please watch this.

[forthedingoes]

*Only, lets correct “Alpha Pair” to Breeding Pair. For fucks sake lets not keep at it with this Dominance Theory bullshit 

Dingoes aren’t naturally pack animals with fluid group dynamics like dogs or even wolves. They stay in small kin groups unless populations are disrupted through baiting, trapping and shooting. If left be, they regulate their own populations, are likely to stick to native prey without learning to hunt on stock, and will stay within territorial boundaries - and guard those boundaries from other dingoes and mesopredators. 

[forthedingoes]

So this is what puppertato was doing here  .. she’s literally just mouthing off. Giving some cheek, expressing minor frustration but not in a serious way. Still being playful and trying to get a response. Most of the time it basically can be summed up in two words: “But WHYYYY?” 

And when you live with/ train dingoes, you can easily hear it every damn day. (And most of the time you need to give them a good reason, too).

[forthedingoes]

This is a great little clip of a wild-living 12 month old male dingo in the Northern Territory. There’s not a heap of footage of wild dingoes just doing their thing, so I’m pretty excited to have stumbled on this. You can get a pretty good picture of dingoes skittish temperament and awareness of the person recording the film at a distance, as well as dingoes distinct tracking movement. This tracking is usually the first thing to get my attention if I see a dingo-like animal from far away. If the didge audio hadn’t been put over, it would have been good to see a panic cough and typical vocalisations apart from the howling you seem to be bombarded with everywhere.. but still, yay! I can’t wait to get some recordings of dingoes just being dingoes - not trapped, bred in captivity, humanised, or in a typically humanistic environment. 

[forthedingoes]

A very silly dingis

[forthedingoes]

I’m going to make a series of translation videos for vocalisations, but this is for @sidetongue in response to this post  . This is a high anxiety alert ‘bark’ which happens in instances when she interprets a howl as a territorial claim (like, “holy shit are there intruders?”) like this video. She has also done this type of vocalisation when she has seen dogs in pain and need of help, like when our families staffy was injured suddenly and a neighbours dog (who later became a foster baby and her best friend) jumped and get caught in the fence (he was ok, I bolted there so it was over quickly). She’s also done this when I’m about to experience a 10/10 spike in pain and will typically pass out/ get disoriented/ be very sick.  This was the kind of bark I was telling you about earlier, but I’ll upload another video soon and show you a clip of what type of vocalising ye lil potato was doing and what it means. When it’s up I’ll link it here.