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Dingo
Some people spell the plural of dingo as 'dingoes', others spell it 'dingos'. Both are OK!
A dingo is a wild dog.
Dingos are covered with yellowish hair.
Dingos live in sandy deserts and all kinds of forests.
Dingos hunt and eat other animals.
Dingos are about 50 centimetres tall and about 120 centimetres long. Most dingos have coats of short yellow - brown hair but there are cream-coloured dingos as well as black and tan. A dingo has a bushy tail and pointed ears.
Dingos are able to adapt to many different habitats throughout Australia. One adaptation is the dingo's coat: a dingo living in hot, tropical areas has a short single coat while a dingo living in cool to cold mountain areas has a longer and thicker coat with a double layer of fur.
Dingos eat almost anything. They hunt reptiles and mammals and will even eat insects. They also eat dead animals they find, and some kinds of plants. When Europeans arrived in Australia the dingos hunted and killed the sheep and rabbits that the settlers brought to Australia.
A dingo usually lives in a small family group. Each dingo group has its own territory. Dingos hunt alone or with other dingos to catch large prey. Dingos can hunt in the day time (diurnal) or at dawn/dusk (crepuscular), and in warmer climates/seasons, at night (nocturnal).
Dingos don't bark. They howl as
a way of announcing where their territory is. They make many different
sounds to communicate within the group or to call pups that stray.
Dingos mate between May and July (winter) and the pups are born 63 days later. The bitch gives birth to her pups in a den. A litter of pups is usually about 5. Both the male and the female care for their pups. They catch food and bring it to the pups until they are about 3 weeks old. Then the pups leave the den and are taught to hunt by their parents. The parents will still catch the prey for their young but they leave it somewhere near the den for the pups to hunt down. A dingo pair stays together for life.
Some scientists think that the dingo is related to wild dogs that live in parts of Asia. Dingos have been in Australia for about 3,500 years. Dingos may have been brought to the country by Australian aborigines who traded with Indian traders. Aborigines kept dingos in their camps and the dogs hunted with the men. In Aboriginal languages, 'dingo' is warrigal, maliki, noggum, boolomo or mirigung.
Some people keep a tame dingo
as a pet dog.
Click here to find out more about the dingo
http://dogs.about.com/cs/breedprofiles/p/dingo.htm
Acknowledge this
source in your bibliography like this:
Dingo (2005). [Online], Available:
www.kidcyber.com.au
updated September 2005