Dingo Wrongly Blamed for Extinction of the Tasmanian Tiger And The Tasmanian Devil

Researchers from the University of Adelaide found that dingoes had no significant role to play in the extinction of the Tasmanian tiger and the Tasmanian devil.

The Australian dingo has been blamed for the demise of Tasmanian tigers (thylacine) and Tasmanian devils from the mainland about 3000 years ago. However, a new study conducted by researchers from the University of Adelaide found that the Aboriginal population and a shift in climate had more to do with these extinctions than the Australian dingo.

"Perhaps because the public perception of dingoes as 'sheep-killers' is so firmly entrenched, it has been commonly assumed that dingoes killed off the thylacines and devils on mainland Australia," researcher Dr Thomas Prowse, Research Associate in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences and the Environment Institute, said in a press release. "There was anecdotal evidence too: both thylacines and devils lasted for over 40,000 years following the arrival of humans in Australia; their mainland extinction about 3000 years ago was just after dingoes were introduced to Australia; and the fact that thylacines and devils persisted on Tasmania, which was never colonised by dingoes."

However, according to Prowse, what people fail to realize is that about the same time dingoes came along the Aboriginal populations also went through a major period of intensification in terms of population growth and technological advances. The climate also changed abruptly at the same time.

For the study, researchers built a complex series of mathematical models to recreate the dynamic interaction between the main potential drivers of extinction, which included the humans, dingoes and the climate. The final findings revealed that though dingoes did play a role in reducing the number of thylacines and devils in the region, human developments and climate changes were the major causes of extinction.

"Our multi-species models showed that dingoes could reduce thylacine and devil populations through both competition and direct predation, but there was low probability that they could have been the sole extinction driver," Dr Prowse said. "Our results support the notion that thylacines and devils persisted on Tasmania not because the dingo was absent, but because human density remained low there and Tasmania was less affected by abrupt climate changes."