Dingoes evolved from Asian pets

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Dingoes, the yellow native dogs of Australia, probably evolved from a very small group of pets brought by south-east Asian settlers, researchers have reported.


Genetic tests on dingoes and a range of dogs from around the world show the animals can date their ancestry back 5,000 years, to either a single female or a very small group of animals, the international team of researchers said.


This coincides nicely with the arrival in Australia of settlers from southeast Asia, they said in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.


"The dingo originated from a population of east Asian dogs," said Peter Savolainen of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and colleagues there and in New Zealand, Australia and the United States.


"The dingoes may have arrived in connection with the expansion, about 6,000 years ago, from South China into Island Southeast Asia of the Austronesian culture," they added.


They collected DNA samples from 211 dingoes, and compared them to the DNA of 676 dogs from around the world and 38 wolves from Europe and Asia.


The researchers looked specifically at mitochondrial DNA, a type of genetic material passed down with few changes from mothers to daughters. Analyzing mitochondrial DNA can provide a kind of genetic clock, showing how long ago a species evolved and even from where.


All the mitochondrial DNA sequences among the dingoes were either identical or off by one single letter of the sequence, they reported.


Dingoes and closely resemble dogs, but full domestication of the dingo has proved difficult. "As a pet it is generally more independent-minded than other dogs," the researchers wrote.


Dingo remains date back about 3,500 years and no dingoes were found on Tasmania, which separated from the rest of Australia about 12,000 years ago, the researchers noted.


And there is no way for a large animal to have reached Australia from anywhere else without help from people, they added.


"The dingo ancestors were therefore most probably introduced to Australia with the aid of humans traveling in boats," they wrote.