Small fixes for the dingo

[Chuditch]

I'm fascinated by dingoes IRL, and as such I've always been extremely happy that Frontier decided to add them to the game! However, there's a few small issues I currently have relating to its biomes and Zoopedia entry that I've brought up many times before, and given it's been two and a half years since the Australia Pack now and they still haven't been fixed, I thought I'd give dingoes their own thread to bring them into the spotlight again. While giving the dingoes chorus behaviour and more colour variations would be fantastic, this thread is more about two small easy fixes that shouldn't take much time to implement.

First and foremost is the issue of the dingo's restricted biome tags. Currently the dingo in-game is considered to be found only in grasslands and deserts, but this vastly underestimates how adaptable they are - they are among Australia's most widespread mammals and their natural distribution ranges across the entirety of the Australian mainland, from the high alpine regions to the tropical rainforests. And, despite widespread misconception, there are still pure dingoes in the south-eastern temperate regions, not that purity means much for canids anyway.

Giving the dingoes the temperate and tropical biome tags would both be more accurate and help change the public's perception of dingoes just being yellow dogs of the desert. It'd also encourage players to build more varied dingo habitats!

Speaking of yellow dogs, the Zoopedia Fun Facts brings up this little tidbit:

Interbreeding with domestic dogs has resulted in unusual colours of dingoes, such as black or white individuals

This is actually false, and has been known as such for quite some time now - the very first European painting of a dingo, done prior to the introduction of domestic dogs to Australia, depicts a black-and-tan individual, and many other colours like brindle, patchy and sable have been found to be present in pure dingoes since. Unfortunately, including this outdated idea in the Zoopedia perpetuates the idea that all dingoes that aren't the classic ginger colour are hybrids or feral dogs, a misconception that leads to many perfectly pure dingoes being killed.

While I can live without the great variety of dingo colour morphs being represented in game (although it is a shame), I would greatly appreciate it if this incorrect fact was removed and replaced with something else - you could even change it to something like "Despite common misconception, pure dingoes can be found in many different colours besides the classic ginger".

Thanks for reading all this, and I hope you take these changes into consideration!

 

[FoxyDee]

Well, I learned something new about the colour morphs in Dingoes. Thanks for sharing that and I support this idea.

 

[DarthQuell]

Hey man, when dingoes were added, I was over the moon, too

I support all this

 

[SalamAnders]

These seem like fairly simple fixes and the kind of changes we have occasionally seen before, so I hope they will look into it. Though I guess where it might be complicated is when they have to hire translators to fix one sentence. (I will translate that one suggested fact to Danish for free, Frontier)

I tend to avoid reading the Zoopedia myself since I know I will get annoyed if I discover mistakes in it. But trying to get the mistakes addressed rather than ignoring them is for sure the right approach.

 

[avietar]

I support you through and through! Justice for dingoes.

 

[Erior]

Real life animals are far more tolerant of changing habitats than the ones in PZ. Remember that most of the Afroeurasian species were around during the ice ages, and their bodies are adapted to those conditions:

Spotted hyenas were around in Europe during the Ice Ages, and will develop a fluffy coat under cold weather, as that coat is a hormonal reaction to the environment. Dingos are early diverging dogs (therefore part of the grey wolf), and thus highly adaptable and prone to changing coats with changing weather (as the hair shed around my flat can prove).

 

[Chuditch]

I noticed the dingo now has temperate and tropical biomes (in addition to grassland and desert).

I’m far away from home right now so I had no way of checking this myself (also why I haven’t been posting here over the past week and a bit), so many thanks to @Aramar for pointing this out! I’m super happy to see that the dingo’s environmental adaptability has finally been given justice almost 3 years after the Australia Pack dropped, and it’s always great to see how Frontier is happy to take feedback on board.

As a show of appreciation, here is a wild (but very friendly) dingo who inspected my campsite in the subtropical rainforests of south-east Queensland yesterday, an environment that would probably fall under the “Tropical” category of PZ’s biome classification system:

Source: https://youtu.be/TWr_5mwwONg

 

[RedPandaReggie]

I'm fascinated by dingoes IRL, and as such I've always been extremely happy that Frontier decided to add them to the game! However, there's a few small issues I currently have relating to its biomes and Zoopedia entry that I've brought up many times before, and given it's been two and a half years since the Australia Pack now and they still haven't been fixed, I thought I'd give dingoes their own thread to bring them into the spotlight again. While giving the dingoes chorus behaviour and more colour variations would be fantastic, this thread is more about two small easy fixes that shouldn't take much time to implement.

First and foremost is the issue of the dingo's restricted biome tags. Currently the dingo in-game is considered to be found only in grasslands and deserts, but this vastly underestimates how adaptable they are - they are among Australia's most widespread mammals and their natural distribution ranges across the entirety of the Australian mainland, from the high alpine regions to the tropical rainforests. And, despite widespread misconception, there are still pure dingoes in the south-eastern temperate regions, not that purity means much for canids anyway.

Giving the dingoes the temperate and tropical biome tags would both be more accurate and help change the public's perception of dingoes just being yellow dogs of the desert. It'd also encourage players to build more varied dingo habitats!

Speaking of yellow dogs, the Zoopedia Fun Facts brings up this little tidbit:



This is actually false, and has been known as such for quite some time now - the very first European painting of a dingo, done prior to the introduction of domestic dogs to Australia, depicts a black-and-tan individual, and many other colours like brindle, patchy and sable have been found to be present in pure dingoes since. Unfortunately, including this outdated idea in the Zoopedia perpetuates the idea that all dingoes that aren't the classic ginger colour are hybrids or feral dogs, a misconception that leads to many perfectly pure dingoes being killed.

While I can live without the great variety of dingo colour morphs being represented in game (although it is a shame), I would greatly appreciate it if this incorrect fact was removed and replaced with something else - you could even change it to something like "Despite common misconception, pure dingoes can be found in many different colours besides the classic ginger".

Thanks for reading all this, and I hope you take these changes into consideration!

I would love these changes to one of my favourite wild canines to become a reality, and as a fellow Aussie, like the Dingo (and yes I know they originally came from Asia), the Dingo should be given more pattern variations and the two extra biome tags. These would be great things to better benefit the Dingo in the game.

 

[Erior]

I mean, the dingo originally came from Asia, and marsupials originally came from South America via Antarctica. That's zoogeography and dispersal; dingos are not to be lumped with colonial introductions.

Now let's see gemsbok become more savannah tolerant.

 

[Chuditch]

I mean, the dingo originally came from Asia, and marsupials originally came from South America via Antarctica. That's zoogeography and dispersal; dingos are not to be lumped with colonial introductions.

Exactly - regardless of ancestry, the dingo is an integral part of the Australian landscape now so I see no issue with calling it Australian.

 

[MissHap]

I'm really glad they added the new biomes for the dingo but they still need to fix the "fun fact" about their fur colours and add chorus howling. If there's one thing dingoes love doing it's howling and making a noise.

I might also suggest they do something about it's ability to climb/jump. Dingoes are very nimble and flexible canines, almost more likes foxes than wolves. They live in very forested and rocky environments and so can climb quite well for a canid. They should update the minimum requirements for fence heights for the dingo because a 1.25m fence will not keep a dingo in and can be jumped quite easily as anyone who has cared for dingoes would know (they use this measurement for basically all the large canines in the game except the maned wolf and you have to wonder if they did their research on these animals at all. Even a large heavy wolf could jump this height). They should also be able to use some of the larger climbing enrichment items and be able to jump from platform to platform. I recently have been to Melbourne Zoo where there was a dingo exhibit that had climbing platforms for them and one of the dingoes was sleeping up on a platform.

They are absolutely not an average "dog" and the game should not treat them as just a smaller, orange wolf.

 

[macronecu]

I mean, the dingo originally came from Asia, and marsupials originally came from South America via Antarctica. That's zoogeography and dispersal; dingos are not to be lumped with colonial introductions.

i thought original settlers brought them from new guinea? i am talking about indigenous australians. not colonial but wouldn't that be a human introduction of their domestics?

 

[MissHap]

i thought original settlers brought them from new guinea? i am talking about indigenous australians. not colonial but wouldn't that be a human introduction of their domestics?

It is most likely they arrived with human help as they would not be able to swim the distances between the islands of south east asia and Australia but exactly when this happened is debated. Australia's environmental conditions are not good for preserving fossils and so it is not known for how long exactly they have been here although it has to have been after Tasmania was cut off from the mainland of Australia, so no longer than around 12,000 years.
However they have been in Australia so long that they are considered native, no matter how they came here. They have a very important role in the ecosystem as a top order predator. They share a common ancestor with ancient east Asian dogs breeds (such as the Shiba Inu) but dingoes themselves have not been selectively bred and domesticated by people and so are not a feral, domestic species. They do not possess features commonly present in domestic dogs such as floppy ears, curled tails and unusual fur colours and patterns. They also cannot digest lots of starch or have large litters of puppies, which domestic dogs are able to do.
They were kept as pets by the aboriginal peoples of Australia and were even lovingly buried after they passed. But they remained wild animals and were tamed rather than domesticated. Kind of like how Asian elephants are used as transport and work animals in Asia.

 

[macronecu]

It is most likely they arrived with human help as they would not be able to swim the distances between the islands of south east asia and Australia but exactly when this happened is debated. Australia's environmental conditions are not good for preserving fossils and so it is not known for how long exactly they have been here although it has to have been after Tasmania was cut off from the mainland of Australia, so no longer than around 12,000 years.
However they have been in Australia so long that they are considered native, no matter how they came here. They have a very important role in the ecosystem as a top order predator. They share a common ancestor with ancient east Asian dogs breeds (such as the Shiba Inu) but dingoes themselves have not been selectively bred and domesticated by people and so are not a feral, domestic species. They do not possess features commonly present in domestic dogs such as floppy ears, curled tails and unusual fur colours and patterns. They also cannot digest lots of starch or have large litters of puppies, which domestic dogs are able to do.
They were kept as pets by the aboriginal peoples of Australia and were even lovingly buried after they passed. But they remained wild animals and were tamed rather than domesticated. Kind of like how Asian elephants are used as transport and work animals in Asia.

interesting, i always thought there was consensus on them being decendents of domesticated dogs, which were domesticated from wolves long ago, and then taken to new guinea and known as the new guinea singing dog and then taken to australia by indigenous peoples as a dog breed and then gone feral.

 

[MissHap]

interesting, i always thought there was consensus on them being decendents of domesticated dogs, which were domesticated from wolves long ago, and then taken to new guinea and known as the new guinea singing dog and then taken to australia by indigenous peoples as a dog breed and then gone feral.

Indigenous Australians have been in Australia for around 50,000 years and did not bring dingoes when they first arrived. They came later with South East Asian traders.
I've done some further reading and it is a very debated subject as to whether dingoes are dogs, wolves or something else entirely. There has not been enough research done to determine their exact lineage and relation to other canines and they have many similarities to both dogs and wolves. They do have a common ancestor with some ancient dog breeds but it is unknown if they came to Australia as domesticated animals or just tamed. Since they have been in Australia there has been little to no attempts to domesticate (selectively breed) dingoes and so they have been effectively "wild" for thousands of years, undergoing natural selection instead of artificial selection. Whether this means they're truly wild or not is up for debate.

 

[Chuditch]

I might also suggest they do something about it's ability to climb/jump. Dingoes are very nimble and flexible canines, almost more likes foxes than wolves. They live in very forested and rocky environments and so can climb quite well for a canid. They should update the minimum requirements for fence heights for the dingo because a 1.25m fence will not keep a dingo in and can be jumped quite easily as anyone who has cared for dingoes would know (they use this measurement for basically all the large canines in the game except the maned wolf and you have to wonder if they did their research on these animals at all. Even a large heavy wolf could jump this height). They should also be able to use some of the larger climbing enrichment items and be able to jump from platform to platform. I recently have been to Melbourne Zoo where there was a dingo exhibit that had climbing platforms for them and one of the dingoes was sleeping up on a platform.

Definitely agree with this! I remember wondering if the dingo would have some climbing ability when it was originally announced, and as you say 1.25 metres is way too low to keep in a dingo. However, given this is mainly just for small issues in the zoopedia (one of which has been fixed, the other of which hasn't) it's a bit out of the scope of this thread.

I see we're starting to delve into discussions of dingo ancestry now lol, and while I don't want to take things too off topic (as I tend to do with dingoes) I might as well chuck in a brief summary of what I know from my own personal research:

Spoiler: Dingo origins

There is a common consensus that dingoes are at least an early branching member of the domestic dog lineage, if not within the clade itself. Genetically they are intermediate between wolves and dogs, which is probably due to their early isolation (preventing interbreeding with later, more "advanced" breeds) and adaptations for living in a wild environment. They almost certainly reached the Australian continent with human assistance (although the people who did it are unknown - it was prior to the Neolithic expansion), but regardless of their domestication status when they originally arrived they have returned to a largely wild state and are now behaviourally much more like wolves than dogs (which is why I don't think they can be considered "feral" anymore). They have also developed unique adaptations all of their own since arriving in Australia, such as a gut microbiome more adapted for eating marsupials and reptiles than ungulates, unusually flexible joints that allow them to climb steep cliffs and squeeze through tiny spaces, and different ecotypes to suit different environments (which I like using this image of an alpine and tropical dingo together to demonstrate).

Some interesting papers for further reading, if you can understand the jargon that is:
Genomic regions under selection in the feralization of dingoes
What the dingo says about dog domestication
The Australian dingo is an early offshoot of modern breed dogs

 

[ElectricMonk]

Definitely agree with this! I remember wondering if the dingo would have some climbing ability when it was originally announced, and as you say 1.25 metres is way too low to keep in a dingo. However, given this is mainly just for small issues in the zoopedia (one of which has been fixed, the other of which hasn't) it's a bit out of the scope of this thread.

I see we're starting to delve into discussions of dingo ancestry now lol, and while I don't want to take things too off topic (as I tend to do with dingoes) I might as well chuck in a brief summary of what I know from my own personal research:

Spoiler: Dingo origins

There is a common consensus that dingoes are at least an early branching member of the domestic dog lineage, if not within the clade itself. Genetically they are intermediate between wolves and dogs, which is probably due to their early isolation (preventing interbreeding with later, more "advanced" breeds) and adaptations for living in a wild environment. They almost certainly reached the Australian continent with human assistance (although the people who did it are unknown - it was prior to the Neolithic expansion), but regardless of their domestication status when they originally arrived they have returned to a largely wild state and are now behaviourally much more like wolves than dogs (which is why I don't think they can be considered "feral" anymore). They have also developed unique adaptations all of their own since arriving in Australia, such as a gut microbiome more adapted for eating marsupials and reptiles than ungulates, unusually flexible joints that allow them to climb steep cliffs and squeeze through tiny spaces, and different ecotypes to suit different environments (which I like using this image of an alpine and tropical dingo together to demonstrate).

Some interesting papers for further reading, if you can understand the jargon that is:
Genomic regions under selection in the feralization of dingoes
What the dingo says about dog domestication
The Australian dingo is an early offshoot of modern breed dogs

Just to add a little, my reading strongly suggests that dingoes are a sister clade of domestic dogs and that both are either nested within, or are a sister clade of Eurasian wolves. As for when they were introduced, I’m not sure of the date, but it seems likely that it must have been prior to, or only shortly before, the separation of Tasmania from mainland Australia - I.e., during or after the last ice age. Neolithic isn’t very precise and spans different periods in different places around the world - it’s defined by (at its end) the introduction of metal working so, in Australia, lasts until 1788.
As for whether they should be considered native, it’s mostly a matter of opinion, depending on what definition you want to use… in any case, they’re now a critical component of Australia’s ecosystems since they occupy the apex predator niches emptied by the extinction of the large marsupial predators.

 

[macronecu]

really fascinating stuff you guys have shared with me, thank you!
i hope more genetic research is done on dingoes to solve some of these mysteries and i hope iucn red list adds them at some point
so people can focus on preserving pure dingos, as there is a lot of interbreeding with dogs going on

 

[Erior]

Focusing on "preserving pure X" is not a good approach for conservation tho. Preserve the ecosystem, not on blood purity, because animals will interbreed.

Canis dogs are utterly interfertile anyway and will form species complexes.

 

[macronecu]

Focusing on "preserving pure X" is not a good approach for conservation tho. Preserve the ecosystem, not on blood purity, because animals will interbreed.

domestic dogs are not part of the ecosystem though, so i am not sure what you said applies here in this case