Australian Dingo Descended from Asian Domestic Dogs

[Dover]

Dingoes Descended from Pet Dogs

ABC Science Online

Aug. 3, 2004 — Dingoes, Australia's wild dogs, are descended from Asian domesticated dogs, not wolves, according to international research.

They might have all come from one pregnant female ancestor, which would have lived about 5,000 years ago and travelled to Australia by boat.

Swedish researcher Peter Savolainen from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm led the research published on Tuesday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Dingoes look like domestic dogs but have some important physiological and behavioral differences. For example, dingoes breed only once a year rather than several times a year, and howl rather than bark.

So, people have long debated whether dingoes were more closely related to wolves than domestic dogs.

This latest research compared changes in mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) in dingoes, wolves and dogs to see which animals were related....Cont'd >

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/afp/20040802/dingo.html

More on Dingoes:

http://www.wwwins.net.au/dingofarm/001.html



http://www.dingoconservation.org/characteristics.html

[xchrom]

1. isn't it fascinating

the way dogs became our companions and traveled the world with us.