DHOLE: The wild dogs of India and Indonesia

The more I see of humans, The more I love Dogs

 THE DHOLE:

The wild dog found in India and in Indonesia, has been taken for a Dingo, but it is much fiercer and virtually untameable. It lives in the jungle and hunts by night. It resembles the  Malinois, or the Belgian sheepdog.

It has shown itself to have great courage. It lives in groups and can give a tough fight to the tiger, sending it clambering up a tree like a cat. It rarely attacks human beings, but does not appear to be afraid of people.

THE SIMIAN JACKAL OR FOX:

In Africa, and more precisely in the high montane grasslands of Ethiopia, lives the Simian jackal or fox. which resembles the Greyhound. It is, in fact , thought that it made its way from Ethiopia to Egypt, where it became the forbear of all modern Greyhounds.

THE MASTIFF OF PHY QUOC   

On the island of Phy Quoc, in the Gulf of Thailand, lives a sturdy Mastiff- like dog, in a semi-wild state. Its distinctive feature is that the coat along its backbone and up to its shoulders is lo0nger than elsewhere on its body, with the fur lying in the opposite direction to the rest of the coat, forming a sort of mane. The dog from Phy Quoc is believed to be the ancestor of RHODESIAN RIDGEBACK, by now a thoroughly domestic breed.

It too has a ridge of hair along its back, running in the opposite direction to the rest of its coat


Raj Prateek Verma

WILD DOGS : DINGO OF AUSTRALIA

The more I see of humans, The more I love Dogs

Wild Dogs : DINGO OF AUSTRALIA

Captain William Dampier, one of the first people to set his foot on Australian soil in 1688 wrote,' My men spied two or three wolf - like creatures. They were starving hungry, and skeletal  to the point where they looked like skin and bones.' What Captain William and his men saw was the Australian DINGO, the only original non-marsupial mammal of the continent.

When early Europeans arrived with their livestock, the ravenous dingoes attacked the flocks with such zeal that for centuries they became the shepherd's main enemy. From the very outset, the dingoes showed no fear  towards domestic dogs, and behaved with them as if they were kith and kin.

The dingo lives in small groups of five or six individuals belonging to a single family; in rare cases these packs may number up to a hundred animals. Australian aborigines  keep them for hunting purposes, each tribe having a couple of them.

The cubs can be found in the hollows of trees and are reared with a great deal of loving care. The Aborigines let the dingoes sleep in their huts, and  feed them with fish and meat.

Dingoes act timidly towards people, which is why the Aborigines never punish them; at worst they will simply scold them while they are hunting.

The dingo will mate with the dog and the offsprings are fertile. When they were mated with the English Sheep-dog or Scottish Collie, the outcome developed into the KELPIE, the highly intelligent Australian sheep-dog.

Like all the wild dogs, the dingo does not bark. The dingo is smaller and lighter than the wolf. The colour varies from tawny to straw to black. The feet and the tip of the tail are invariably white .

Raj Prateek Verma