Dog and Dingo DNA sequences

What is the relationship between dogs and dingoes, and the wolves they're both related to?
29 April 2022
Presented by Chris Smith
Production by Chris Smith.

DINGO

A dingo

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Dingoes are native Australian dogs. Although how and when they got to Australia isn't known. They were certainly already there by the time the first western explorers visited the continent in the late 1700s, but fossil dingo remains go back only a few thousand years, arguing that they didn't arrive with the first humans, who settled Australia as far back as 40,000 years ago. So what is the relationship between dogs and dingoes, and the wolves they're both related to? If we can answer this question, it can help us understand more about climate change, and human history and migration too, because where people went, dogs went as well. Speaking with Chris Smith, Latrobe University's Bill Ballard got into this debate under slightly unusual circumstances...

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