Thoughts on dingos

Well just sayin..

I have heard of people having them as pets. Originally they WERE pets. time has gone on and they became wild. Fair enough.

But to have them in zoos and pens that they never leave?

I think that it is very cruel.

Can you imagine a staffy being in a zoo pen with a card saying "the staffordshire bull terrier used to be a pet dog but everyones decided to just put it in a zoo instead!"

The zoo in my city has two African dogs, and they are so sad to look at. One walks from the "den" to its spot, and doesnt move until bed time. The other one has made a track around the pen and it has a ....ritual...i guess...

It walks around the tree twice, then around the pen, then around the tree twice...etc

Dingos are considered wild animals, not feral, so yes, I would say it's cruel to keep them in zoos - just as cruel as it is to keep bears/gorillas/tigers etc in zoos!

I can't see that a pure bred dingo would make a good pet, any more than a wolf does! There are many digo/domestic dog crosses that seem to be ok as a house dog, but you'd always run the risk that the 'wild' instincts could kick in at any time.

i remember when i was young we went to a zoo in scotland, my dad, the prat decided that this scottish wild cat didn't look like it could be a threat, so he stuck his his finger through the mesh despite us warning him. well he almost lost his finger and wondered why we were laughing at him. lesson learnt

Well all animals have a tendancy to be "wild" dingo/wolf crosses are obv more dangerous...but only when they are alone!

A guy was in a pack for weeks and never came to harm but the wolves were affectionate to him.

which leads me to a new question...

is ONE dog better because they see the humans as their packs, or is having a pack of dogs better?

a pack is a bad idea

eh?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01cqrvs

there's a story on packs here

well, yeah it's cruel, but not just because the dingo could be a pet... it's just cruel to keep any animal locked in a pen to never come out. luckily zoos these days are at least trying their best to stimulate animals as for many it would be either zoo or death as a choice (not able to be released into the wild).

russdogmum wrote:well, yeah it's cruel, but not just because the dingo could be a pet... it's just cruel to keep any animal locked in a pen to never come out. luckily zoos these days are at least trying their best to stimulate animals as for many it would be either zoo or death as a choice (not able to be released into the wild).

The difference is that the dingo isnt in danger of becoming extinct. Theyre just in zoos because theyre an Australian thing. Like a roo. Wolves are trapped too, and i hate that. I hate any "wild" animal being trapped really.

there are times when a wild animal needs to be removed, ie canada with bears in towns, australia crocs in pools and same in us with alligator, if there is no natuaral place to put a wild animal, why not a zoo, working wonders for dwindling panda population

The animals were there 356904056984096 years before.

Humans are the invaders

germs were before that, i am still using bleach to kill em

at the end of the day some species would be extinct if man didn't set up breeding programs, but watch the program i posted a link to then make your mind up, it has a lot of professional opinions. i'm a novice compared to these

I think its cruel to put any animal in a cage locked up for its life but saying that some zoo's are doing a hell of a lot of good in bringing back species into the wild. And as Meg stated zoo's do work hard these days to keep the animals stimulated. It is also true that without zoo's the panda probably would be extinct by now. Zoo's used to be terrible places full of sadness but our local zoo Howlett's work hard on putting young animals born in the zoo back into the wild and restocking the populations.

Heres a thought... if we humans considered all living things with our habitation of this planet, maybe the earth could be shared symbiotically and we would not need zoos to preserve a species.

.

That would be a Nice place to live Lynne

well i think they are wild dogs and like all wsild creatures if you go encroaching on their land you can expect the worst. the human population is expanding and as such developers are building much needed housing on the territory that has been inhabited by wild anumals for millenia. take the bears, lions, tigers, crocodiles and alligators. what do people expect the animal was there first dont moan if you move into its natural habitat and get bitten or killed its your own bloody fault. but as usual the animal gets killed cos the human was bitten.

Equi wrote:Well all animals have a tendancy to be "wild" dingo/wolf crosses are obv more dangerous...but only when they are alone!
A guy was in a pack for weeks and never came to harm but the wolves were affectionate to him.

The guy that lived with a wolf pack lived according to their rules! He 'became' a wolf, if you like. However, a wolf cannot adapt to life with humans, in the human world. You cannot tame a wolf. I would hazzard a guess and say that a dingo would be the same.

Dingos aren't feral dogs, they are a species of wild dog like coyotes and African wild dogs.
It takes a long time breeding together the most docile of the species together to make animals suitable for domestication. People with pet wolves do not just go out and fetch back a wild cub; the cub is from years and years of careful selective breeding for the best temperament. Dogs evolved alongside man over thousands and thousands of years. Dogs that are left to become feral gradually revert back to a uniform type which is most likely what the first dogs looked like. (Pariah dogs)
The reason they look so different from wolves is the genes for domestication drag along with them genes for a variety for height, size, shape and colour. This was proven with the silver fox experiments in Russian. The tamest foxes were bred together over dozens of generations and started changing in appearance; getting lop ears, variegated coats and curly tails.