The Dingo’s Fate
26th February 2026
The convoluted story of how a species of dog first arrived in Australia and subsequently took over the Outback challenges fundamental notions about what it means to be “native.”
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Indeed, the claim has been made that the dingo, whatever its origins, is now a fully wild animal, enmeshed in its ecosystem — and it cannot, therefore, be equated with domestic livestock or be condemned as a mere escaped dog. So the argument goes. This, however, is exactly the difficulty: The status “feral” almost by definition means it cannot be outgrown. Wildness and domesticity constitute a sharp, ontological binary, and the state of “feral-ness” is a catch-all label for any member of the latter group caught attempting to escape — quite hopelessly — the original sin of human companionship. The Midas touch of our species, whose brush invariably transmutes nature into artifice, can take lineages out of the wild, but it cannot put them back. Once a domestic, always a domestic. There is no requiem for the stray dog.
Every time I see a dingo I think “Carolina Yellow Dog”.
Coincidence? I think not….