![]() The Striped skunk is threatened by predation, disease, environmental conditions (such as a severe winter or a drought), chemicals, human activities, diseases like rabies and the associated control programs. Although these animals are usually silent, they can make a wide range of sounds, including hissing, screeching, churring, growling, twittering, and cooing sounds during social interactions or when alarmed. Spraying typically takes place after a warning display, where the skunk stomps its feet and arches its back, at the same time raising its tail. This oily musk, which is expelled through the anus, may cause temporary blindness or pain if sprayed in the potential attacker’s eyes. Docile in nature, they are famous for their defense system of a bad-smelling spray that comes from two glands near the base of their tail. During winter for extended periods, they are inactive but they do not truly hibernate. When it is colder, they prefer to remain in underground dens. During the day, they nest in the abandoned dens that other animals have lived in, or in brush piles or hollowed logs, or underneath buildings. “For example, the black coat colour in wolves came from dogs and is associated with increased immunity and so we want to look to see if there is a similar pattern in dingoes.Skunks are nocturnal solitary animals and forage and hunt in the evening. “We are curious to see if coat colour is part of the natural selection and adaption in dingoes, or if there are other reasons for these coat colours. “We want to examine whether these coat colours are ancestral or came from dogs originally but have been present in the population for 100 and 200 years,” Dr Cairns said. The researchers are planning to use updated genetic techniques to look at dingo ancestry across Australia to uncover the origin of some of the coat colours. The researchers suggest that other features such as floppy ears or a broad snout shape could be used to identify feral domestic dogs or recent dingo-dog hybrids. “But a key finding of this work is that coat colour should not be used to assess ancestry in dingoes.” “The widely held idea is that a dingo is ginger animal with white socks and a white tail tip,” Michael Letnic, senior author of the paper and professor in conservation biology and ecosystem restoration at UNSW Science said. There was also no coat colour that could distinguish dingoes with or without dog ancestry from each other, or from domestic dogs. They found that domestic dogs with no dingo ancestry are rare in the wild, representing less than 1.5 per cent of the population. They examined the relationship between coat colour and ancestry in wild dingoes by testing the genetic makeup of 1325 wild canids (animals belonging to the Canidae family, such as dingoes, domestic dogs and wolves) across south-eastern NSW.Ībout a quarter of the samples were dingoes with no evidence of domestic dog ancestry while around three-quarters were dingoes with some domestic dog ancestry. Researchers from UNSW, University of Sydney and University of Melbourne took part in the study. In Australia, dingoes are typically believed to be ginger in colour, while unusual coat colours such as brindle (black and brown stripes) or sable (ginger with a black stripe along the spine) are widely put forward to be evidence of contemporary domestic dog hybridisation.īut the study, published in the Journal of Zoology, found that while 53 per cent of dingoes have a ginger coat colour, 9 per cent were sable, 11 per cent black and tan, 14 per cent brindle, 5 per cent black, 1 per cent white and 6 per cent were patchy (white with spots of ginger or black). ![]() The study follows 2019 research by UNSW and collaborators which found that almost all wild dogs in NSW are dingoes or dingo-dominant hybrids, challenging the widely held view that pure dingoes are virtually extinct in the state. “Using coat colour to decide what animals should be culled is not a very good idea.” “So that's showing that really dingoes are much more variable than we think and seeing an animal with an odd coat colour doesn't immediately mean that it's a hybrid. “We actually found pure dingoes that had a brindle, black and tan, patchy or sable coat colour,” Dr Kylie Cairns, a conservation biologist from UNSW Sydney and co-author of the study said. The Centre for Ecosystem Science research suggests that animals assumed to be dingo-dog hybrids based on their coat colour and culled may have been pure dingoes. There is no coat colour that distinguishes dingoes from dingo-dog hybrids, a study involving UNSW Sydney has found.
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