EP 03 Not a Dog, a DINGO // How the Dingo is different to our domestic Dog

hi guys what's up welcome back to the bingo channel my name is ali and this is pumbaa today pumbaa is going to help me demonstrate how he as a pure alpine bingo is incredibly different to a domestic dog [Music] dingoes are not dogs there are many misconceptions surrounding dingoes and a lot of these misconceptions are fueled by the theory that dingoes are just dogs that have gone wild this is absolutely not the case dingoes have been isolated in australia for thousands upon thousands of years where they have evolved to suit australia's harsh conditions they have also never been through the domestication process [Music] every single domestic dog no matter what breed has a really broad chest and a narrower head in comparison every single dingo has a really narrow chest and a broader head this is really really important for survival for our dingos because they know that where their head fits the rest of their body can follow the reason that this is important is because if you're a dingo in the desert and you need to find water that's no longer on the surface it's usually underground they need to be able to squeeze into tight spaces and get underground to find that order if you're in a forested environment as a dingo and there's a bushfire that goes through you can actually escape the bushfire by going underground as well which is really cool dingoes are also den animals you're probably thinking sure pumbaa's head is bigger than his chest and therefore his chest can fit through tight spaces but what is he doing with these long legs well bingos are actually incredibly flexible they can actually subluxate their joints this means that dingoes like pumbaa can actually bring their legs all the way up in line with their ribcage dingos like pumbaa also have a very wide range of movement in their shoulders and in their back legs as well dingoes also being the largest land predator in australia have to be very good at hunting they have adapted to have some really cool sensory equipment even more advanced than our domestic dogs dingos have a sense of smell that is just as good as the beagle at the airport but there's a lot of reasons that dingos like pumbaa wouldn't be very good at that role one of them being that dingoes are actually quite difficult to train it's more like trying to train a cat the second reason is that pumbaa has so much sensory equipment that it would be sensory overload for him pumbaa retains the use of his whiskers for hunting he can actually use his whiskers to sense vibrations of insects in the ground and behind tree bark and as a cub pumbaa's first meals actually would have been of insects so if you can already imagine back to the airport scenario if pumbaa was going along in sniffing luggage he would also have his whiskers detecting the vibrations of other things going on in the airport on top of this humber's eyes are also in a different position to a domestic dogs domestic dogs have been bred with their eyes facing forward so that they can communicate with us of course our domestic dogs have turned this back around on us and now they always ask us to go for a walk and for whatever's on our dinner plates whereas our dingos having never been to that domestication process have their eyes slightly slanted and almond shaped which gives them wider peripheral vision as well as this pumbaa's opera house shaped ears are fully furred on the inside and can actually hear a human heartbeat up to 25 meters away which is just incredible so if we go back to the airport scenario usually the dogs sniffing your luggage are something like a beagle with bread beagles with their ears like this which means they can actually block out some sound block out some of their vision and they've got their eyes facing forward they're not using their whiskers for anything and they can just focus on their nose and what their nose is picking up pumbaa on the other hand would have sensory overload as i said and he'd just be picking up way too much that's going on so i'm sure just from these facts alone you can already see how different a dingo is to a domestic dog another amazing feature that differentiates dingoes from dogs is actually to do with brain chemistry when domestic dogs lose their footing the immediate reaction is to release adrenaline this makes dogs quite rigid and stiff when they lose their footing in contrast to this dingoes actually release dopamine when they lose their footing this means they kind of go all floppy the reason that this is a survival thing for dingoes is that if they're walking along a tree branch and it snaps or they happen to fall off something they're less likely to actually break any bones because they're not going all rigid and they're just going floppy so i'm hoping that you can already start to see how incredibly different dingoes are to our domesticated dogs there are actually many more differences between dingos and dogs that we don't have time to cover today such as dingos having an elongated rib cage which is actually extra protection from kangaroos i hope that we'll be able to cover these in a future video humber and i would like to say thank you so much for watching we hope that you've learned something new if you haven't already checked out our video about dingo history and our other video about dingo ecotypes be sure to go over and check them out take care everyone you

Channel: The Dingo Channel

Views: 412,015

Keywords: dingo, dingo not dog, pumbah the dingo, alpine dingo, native species, australian animal, wildlife, education, threatened species, australia, apex predator, australianwilddog, difference between dingos and dogs, difference between dingoes and dogs, dingoes, dingos, dingo discovery, australian dingo foundation, australian wildlife, wildlife conservation, zookeeper, australian youtuber

Id: Uq2agRt4dKA

Length: 5min 40sec (340 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 14 2021