High in the Australian Alps, a passing driver has witnessed a little-known side of one of the nation’s most elusive predators.
Photographer Ian Brown stopped his car after spotting a ginger-coloured dingo lying on the roadside of the Kosciuszko wilderness in early autumn.
She was clearly dead and had been struck hours ago during the previous night.
But it was the dark figure of her mate, standing over her, that left him “taken aback”.
The fear of humans compelled two younger dingoes to retreat into the scrub, but he didn’t want to leave.
“Every time a car came, he’d run off the road, but then he’d come back and just sit there waiting,” he told Yahoo News.
Brown continued on his way and then returned five hours later with his camera.
“The dingoes were still there, waiting,” he said.
“I’ve never seen that before.”
His haunting photograph of the moment shows the male on the hillside above her body.
“They do love, they do have feelings, empathy,” Brown said.
“And they do mourn.”
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The male dingo would run from the roadside when vehicles passed.
(Ian Brown/Michelle J Photography)
The male dingo stared back at Ian, refusing to leave his mate.
(Ian Brown/Michelle J Photography)Why dingoes have a reason to fear humans
Dingoes are trapped, shot, and poisoned by state governments around Australia, including in NSW, where Brown photographed the dead female.
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The species is locally extinct in many areas across the country, and where it survives, it’s often in small numbers.
In Canberra, there is somewhere between 49 and 100 dingoes left across the entire territory, while in Victoria’s Big Desert region, the population is likely fewer than 80.
Because the population around Kosciuszko is small, Brown had never seen one dead on the side of the road before, nor a pack in mourning.
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Mel Browning, the director of the Australian Dingo Foundation, explained that dingoes are highly sentient animals that generally pair for life.
There are several recorded instances of captive individuals having to be euthanised after the death of their mate.
“Their grieving can be that extreme that they can lie down next to their mate and starve themselves to death,” she told Yahoo News.
While most Australians are unaware of this behaviour, Browning said it’s well known by one small group of people — trappers who cull the animals on farms.
“If they trap a dingo, they’ll know the partner will be close by,” she said.
“They’ll sit in wait, and then get two for one.”
How one dingo death has widespread impact
Browning explained that the death of one dingo will have ramifications for the entire pack.
As it’s now autumn, the dead female Brown photographed would have likely been pregnant, as pups are born in winter.
“So there’s the next generation lost,” she said.
“When they bait dingoes, they do it in autumn and then spring, when the juveniles are beginning to explore out of the den.”
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