Tiger's demise: dingo did do it

Richard Macey
September 6, 2007


However, the dog, which arrived with Indonesian seafarers some time in the past 6000 years, didn't act alone. It was probably a conspiracy, the scientists say, involving the dingo, climate change and humans.

Stephen Wroe, a University of NSW biomechanics expert who worked with a team including University of Newcastle colleagues Colin McHenry and Philip Clausen, reached the conclusion after studying the skulls of dingoes and thylacines to understand their ability to catch food.

Dr Wroe said their results showed that while the thylacine - a marsupial more closely related to kangaroos than dogs - had a body shape broadly resembling a dingo, the two animals had very different skull structures.

While the thylacine had a very powerful bite, the bones and muscles in its head would not have had the strength to hang on to large animals struggling to escape from its jaws. So it was probably limited to relatively small and medium-sized prey. While the dingo's bite was "rather less powerful, even for its size", its robust skull was able to cope with greater stresses, allowing it to take on relatively large animals.

The thylacine was heavier, however, and it was likely both animals hunted the same prey and became competitors.

"But the dingo was more flexible, also eating insects, nuts and lizards. Dingoes are also pretty good scavengers," Dr Wroe said.

The dingo's arrival coincided with Aborigines using stone-tipped spears and spear-throwers, which would have boosted their ability to hunt both thylacines and the animals the thylacines fed on, Dr Wroe said. In addition, Australia was drying out, reducing the thylacine's habitat.

"It may be that if you took out any one of those those factors the thylacine wouldn't have gone extinct on the mainland," Dr Wroe said. The findings appear today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society, Series B.

