Talk:Canis lupus dingo

2 articles

It is rather confusing to have two articles called dingo and dingo (taxon) next to each other. Bever (talk) 06:10, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Hello Bever, I don't quite follow the "next to each other" meaning, however one is the Indigenous Australian name for the native dog dingo and the other is the scientific classification Dingo (taxon) that has been chosen to cover a number of taxa, of which the dingo is but one. Regards, William Harris • (talk) • 08:47, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Canis lupus dingo

Hello All. Over the past year I have developed much of the Taxonomy and Lineage sections for this article and that of Dingo. I am of the opinion that this article should be changed back to its original name of Canis lupus dingo. My reasons are as follows:

• The taxon Canis dingo refers to the Australian dingo only.
• The taxon Canis lupus dingo is the designation given by Wozencraft in Mammal Species of the World edition 3 (2005) p575-577. The term covers those taxa that can be found listed in this article. Those taxa are more widely distributed than Australia, and include the dingo's sister the New Guinea Singing Dog as well as some others in this region.
• As indicated by editor Bever directly above, having two articles that commence with the word "Dingo" when using the Wikipedia Search box is confusing.

Does anybody have an opinion against a WP:MOVE back to the original name, please? William Harris • (talk) • 09:36, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

The page has been successfully moved. William Harris • (talk) • 22:15, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

I'm wiping away a tear, its a lovely read, and a glimpse of solutions to other content arrangement.. I think the content on this population and the duplicate taxobox should only reside here, dingo is the more loosely defined concept and should only contain content that cannot be attributed to this subspecies (via its systematic synonymy). While that would be ideal, there is a obvious case to summarise this article at dingo and move content on nomenclature here before it inadvertently forks. — cygnis insignis 07:06, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

Hello User:Cygnis insignis and thanks. I completely agree. I intend to "re-engineer" this article - as I have done in the past - to (a) provide consolidation of the taxonomy to cover the Dingo/NGSD/Dog debate here (b) bring this article up to Class=B quality, and (c) rationalizing my "genetics" studies because they may be interesting but probably a bit technical for your average reader. Once I have this base prepared, I will be ready to move onto some changes at Dingo (there will be some growling and biting!) and the Dog. No worries about content forking: I have a firm presence on both this page and Dingo, with allies. William Harris • (talk) • 07:27, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

Even more impressive, and interesting; I'm going to see if I can find what Ireland said (an amazing worker, I'm learning, in ornithology). While I was fiddling with the article on the oil painting by Stubbs, I noticed they referred to the artists work as a "scientific specimen". While I am not interpreting that opinion literally (in the taxonomic sense), is there any mention of depiction as description in the revisions of the literature, even incidentally? cygnis insignis 14:46, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

In that painting article, I am not quite sure what "...it is one of the few oil paintings to be considered a scientific specimen..." actually means. Was the writer referring to the painting or the dingo depicted? Unclear. Apart from Phillip's rudimentary description, and the slightly amusing one by Tench, I know of no other early descriptions. If there are, they are probably buried away where we cannot find them easily online. William Harris • (talk) • 08:53, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

Cheers. My reading of the source was the painting has been described as a specimen, but what it says amongst other this is "There are only a very small number of oil paintings representing scientific specimens: …", drat! What I was reading into it was taken from this, "The Dingo appears to have been based only on Banks’s eyewitness accounts of the animal". An illustration can be a holotype, although I am only familiar with two examples which were drawn from living subjects, not one using a scientist's description? Am I misusing specimen in that sense, is it legitimate to use that term for an illustration, or does it only refer to more useful and less presentable specimens in a museum drawer? And does this dig my way out whatever confusion it may generate: [1]? — cygnis insignis 15:37, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

I am no expert on holotypes, but if you like I can call upon the opinion of another editor who may be. However, before we go down that path I think our friends in the Arts Council of England may not be clear on these scientific definitions, and wrote what they did in the way of exciting prose. I think your edit to "represent" is the correct one. William Harris • (talk) • 21:28, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

Canis papuensis edit suggestion

In the Canis papuensis section, you paraphrase Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay by saying:

"Instead of the bold independence of the Australian dingo, the coastal dogs behaved very subserviently toward humans, exhibiting begging and grovelling".

I don't know how close this is to the original text, so I didn't want to edit. But perhaps you could consider making it an actual quote, or remove some of the implied bias (no offense meant!) of the adjectives? If you replace "subservient" with "submissive" (a more typical behavioural term) and remove "bold" and "very" it would go a long way. Or, since the actual point, I think, is something about the degree/type of human/dog interactions, perhaps something like:

"Miklouho-Maclay described submissive social behaviour (including begging and grovelling) by the coastal dogs towards humans, unlike the Australian dingos he observed."

Kduckworth (talk) 14:55, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, that is an excellent suggestion. (I woke up at 4am this morning with the idea of tracking down the original quote - the mind would not let it go! Later I read your suggestion.) William Harris • (talk) • 21:18, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

Now validated and amended - comment not supported by the reference. William Harris • (talk) • 08:11, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

Timor-Leste specimen

Under the section Archaeological evidence: "Timor-Leste at 3,075–2,9213 YBP" and "Madura Caves were directly carbon dated between 3,348–3,081 YBP". Note that the upper timing for the Timor-Leste specimen matches the lower timing for the Madura Caves specimen. This might be a coincidence. The extremely short fragment of DNA that could be obtained from the Timor-Leste specimen tells us that its ancestors are from eastern Asia, as are the dingo's ancestors. The researchers will attempt to obtain a longer sequence to "determine whether the Timor dog has the point mutations found in dingoes and New Guinea singing dogs". We do not know yet if it is a dingo or not! William Harris • (talk) • 10:21, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

The later timing "2,9213" clearly has one too many digits. Probably one of the digits should be removed but without access to the source I can't tell which. 4 significant figures also seems rather dubious (but I don't know much about carbon dating so I could be wrong there). Hairy Dude (talk) 18:31, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

Eyes of a hawk! It was 2,921 - a 3 slipped in on the end somehow. Many thanks! William Harris • (talk) • 11:04, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Revisiting this article's name...

Hi all, I note that this page (presently "Canis lupus dingo") has oscillated between that name and "Dingo (taxon)" in the past. I have recently tried to provide a definition/explanation for the present name by expanding the lead/introductory paragraph a little, but am getting bogged down by the fact that (1) it needs explanation at all, (2) the term is most likely unknown to the casual user, and (3) it comes from a work now 15 years old, and more recent sources likely use other terms anyway for the same concept. Thus, I would appreciate feedback as to whether the article title itself could be improved. Basically as I see it (and not necessarily across all the previous history), it deals with the clade that presently contains the dingo and the New Guinea singing dog (NGSD), that were grouped (along with some putative extinct taxa, which may have been the same anyway) under the Cld subspecies in Mammal Species of the World, 3rd edition, in 2005. Now (2020), alternatives to the MSW3 treatment are available for the same concept (or portions of it), not yet resolved or finalized, as e.g. Canis familiaris dingo (subspecies of domestic dog but the latter a full species, not a subspecies of wolf), Canis dingo, or just Canis familiaris (no subspecies recognised; possibly also Canis familiaris dingo as well. In the light of this ambivalence, keeping Canis lupus dingo as the article title seems a bit inaccurate/sub-optimal, especially since (as noted above) this latin scientific name is likely to be obscure to the majority of casual users.

So I am wondering about changing the article title to something more taxonomy neutral, as well as more comprehensive to the non-specialist reader in the first instance. Maybe along the lines of "Dingo-New Guinea singing dog Clade" or similar, which is really what the article is about, I believe. Thoughts, anyone, or better suggestions? Regards - Tony Rees Tony 1212 (talk) 06:19, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

I don't think there is a name change that is totally satisfactory. While it seems strange to have separate dingo and Canis lupus dingo articles, it does conform with the taxonomy of MSW3, which unfortunately remains the default mammalian taxonomy. I think dividing dingos into the Australian dingos and NGSDs and using dingo or Dingo (taxon) or Dingo ''sensu lato'' makes most sense, but I suspect this will always have resistance from those who see the dingo as exclusively Australian. The problems with Canis familiaris dingo are consistency with other articles and uncertainty on whether this taxon would include the NGSD or have it as another subspecies. In the latter case there may be no alternative to have a titlee using clade as part of the name, unless something like Southeast Asian, Sahul or Australasian feral dogs catches on. The best taxonomic decision for article naming would be Canis dingo for both Auastalalian and New Guinea subspecies, but I'm not sure this can be justified at this stage. —  Jts1882 | talk  08:59, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

@Tony 1212 and Jts1882: I have pondered this proposal for several months. We also now have the recently discovered New Guinea wild Highland dog to add to our collection - they are in this grouping but genetically unique to both the NGSD and the dingo. What we find in the scientific literature - largely evolutionary biology/genetics/domestication - is a trend towards referring to the "dingo clade". Both internationally and nationally, and whether this group is regarded as a separate species or a special form of dog by the researchers, that is the name being used. KC's latest article adds more weight to it, and a basis from which I shall give this article a much-needed overhaul. No need for a quick reply - mull over it for a while. William Harris (talk) 23:38, 4 March 2021 (UTC)