The term ‘home range’ means the normal living area of an animal. If a wild dog spends time coming in and out of sheep paddocks, then that area is part of its home range. The home ranges of social companions overlap, with the combined area forming a group home range.
When defended, this can be termed a ‘territory’. The home range of individual adult pack members in the Fortescue River area averaged 56 km2 for females and 85 km2 for males. Group home ranges, or pack territories, ranged from about 45 to 110 km2. On the Nullarbor, dingoes roamed over larger areas, of up to 300 km2. Territoriality of wild dogs implies defence of an area.
Territoriality involves resident animals stopping intruding dogs from settling in that area. Intruders usually avoid the residents and encounters can lead to desperate chases, which can lead to the killing of the intruders by the residents defending their patch.
This doesn’t mean that intruders normally turn around and retreat the way they have come. Rather, the intruders keep wandering, looking for an area where there is no sign of existing dogs, such as scents, markings, or howling, and where there is sufficient food and water.
They can actually spend some time within a pack territory without conflict, but only by keeping out of the way of the existing pack. More often, these wanderers simply move on, searching for vacant areas with sufficient food and water. This further movement can lead these wild dogs into stocked country. In effect, the territorial residents force the intruders through, rather than turn them back.
Will animals routinely travel large distances to sheep paddocks?
Distances travelled by wild dogs have been the subject of much discussion and study, as well as some wild speculation. The fact that a dog is quite capable of covering tens of kilometres in a day doesn’t mean that they normally do so. Travel over significant distances consumes considerable energy, and is rarely undertaken unless the wild dogs receive an immediate survival advantage by travelling.
The issue of wild dog movements has an important bearing on control activities, because it influences decisions such as how far to extend control work from stock paddocks. Decades ago, there was a general view that wild dogs roamed vast distances and that any dog within hundreds of kilometres had the potential to kill stock.
As a result, some doggers previously operated in distant, remote country where their efforts were wasted. The real problem dogs are far closer to home. Wild dogs tend to settle in an area that provides them ith adequate resources. They roam as far as necessary for food or water, but there is a biological advantage in an animal being familiar with the best sites for food, shelter, and escape from predators and humans.
Where resources such as watering points are more scattered, dogs roam further and have larger home ranges. Intensive radio tracking of hundreds of dingoes has shown that instances of individuals living well away from the paddocks and making ‘raids’ from afar, are rare.
At the Fortescue River, the average distance moved from one day to the next was only about 3 km. Most commonly, wild dogs that travelled to encroach on sheep country either:
- settled there (this was more likely to occur in pastoral country where suitable habitat usually exists in the paddocks); or
- shifted their home range to the neighbouring refuge area (this was more likely to occur in farming areas where limited opportunities exist for dogs to settle within the actual paddocks).
There’s not much biological advantage in an animal living in one area and having to travel through largely unknown country into an area such as a sheep paddock, despite the easy food. Dealing with such an occasional occurrence shouldn’t be totally ruled out, but this should not form the basis of an entire control strategy. The wild dogs that pose the greatest risk to stock live closer to paddocks.
Do dingoes migrate?
Dingoes do not undertake regular or seasonal migrations (which are directional movements of a significant proportion of the population). Rather, their movements are generally short and localised, concentrating around favoured areas such as gorges and river pools, where food, water and shelter are readily available. Dingo movement patterns appear to be similar from season to season, except when breeding females are confined to dens during the whelping and early nursing period.
Individuals do occasionally disperse from their home range, but long distance dispersal moves are rare. During the Fortescue study, only one-third of the dingoes which dispersed travelled more than 20 km from their original range, and only one dingo dispersed more than 50 km. On the Nullarbor, less than 10 per cent of dingoes moved in excess of 50 km.
Food habits and predation:
Dingo hunting strategies are flexible and range from individuals operating alone to capture small prey such as lizards, to groups of dingoes cooperating to hunt large prey such as kangaroos or cattle. The dingo diet broadly reflects the type of prey available and the relative abundance of various prey species.
Dietary studies usually identify a relatively narrow range of prey species, indicating that dingoes are specialists rather than opportunistic feeders. For example, although dingoes kill sheep, they appear to prefer to eat other prey such as kangaroos.
In the Fortescue area, dingoes prey predominantly on euros and red kangaroos, though cattle carrion and sheep are also eaten. Less common species such as echidna and rock wallabies also appear as minor items in the diet. On the Nullarbor Plain, rabbits are the predominant dietary item, even though kangaroos are present.
Dingoes usually catch large prey from behind, as the pursued animal is running away. When prey such as kangaroos have been brought to a stop, dingoes transfer their attack from the hind end to the throat. Death usually results from suffocation and shock, rather than blood loss. Mutilation often results from attacks by inexperienced dingoes and by dingoes attacking prey for reasons other than for food, resulting in injured or mutilated sheep where dingoes are active.
Animals killed by dingoes usually have clear puncture wounds at the throat. There may also be evidence of bites and bruising to the legs, particularly the hind legs. Verification of predation often requires skinning of the throat and legs, and may require an examination of signs of the struggle near the carcass.
Information Sourced From:
