Thanks to a dingo pup found close to death on a lonely outback track, scientists may get the first opportunity to test one of Charles Darwin's most challenging hypotheses.
Sandy and her two siblings were three weeks old when they were rescued near the Strzelecki Track in central Australia by Barry and Lyn Eggleton in 2014.
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A dingo does what a dingo wants
Tim Faulkner, General Manager of the Australian Reptile Park, introduces five endangered dingo puppies born at the park.
The holidaymakers nearly ran over two of the pups huddled on the road. They found a third nearby, but no sign of their mother or a den.
The dingoes were tiny - all three could fit in Mr Eggleton's hand. They were dehydrated and covered in parasites. With the help of vets, the couple nursed them back to health and raised them.
Sandy and her siblings, Eggie and Didi, are purebred desert dingoes, increasingly rare in Australia as the native animals interbreed with wild and domestic dogs and are targeted as pests by landholders.Â
A proposal by a University of NSW scientist to study Sandy's DNA - and, in doing so, test for the first time a hypothesis raised by Darwin in 1868 - is one of five finalists of the World's Most Interesting Genome competition.Â
A public vote is now open to determine who wins the Pacific Biosciences SMRT Grant, which will enable sequencing of the complete genome of an important animal or plant.
Professor Bill Ballard, who submitted the proposal, said genome sequencing for desert dingoes could help answer significant questions of science and conservation.Â
"There's very few of Darwin's original hypotheses that are yet to be tested," Professor Ballard, from UNSW's School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences, said. His theory that there are two steps to the process of domestication - and that, alongside natural selection, they are other forms of evolutionary change - is "one of the most challenging".
Darwin proposed that animals became domesticated through unconscious selection, as a result of non-intentional human influences, and artificial selection, through deliberate human activities such as breeding.
"We want to sequence the dingo to look at the changes in the genes associated with the process of domestication," Professor Ballard said. "As a wild-born pure dingo, Sandy provides a unique case study. Pure dingoes are intermediate between wild wolves and domestic dogs. Obtaining the genetic sequence ... would be ground-breaking in helping pinpoint some of the genes for temperament and behaviour that underlie the transition from wild animal to perfect pet."
Mr Eggleton said that like the spaniels, boxers, bitsers and kelpies his family has kept as pets, the dingoes were very affectionate and had developed strong bonds with their human carers.Â
"But with dingoes, it is like dealing with adults, whereas with a domestic dog it is far more like dealing with young children," he said. "Dingoes are incredibly independent. They have not lost their hunting skills. They are highly intelligent, they learn so quickly and they are observers. They do not need humans to survive."
Mr Eggleton said people generally "have no understanding of this wonderful animal. They are not the savage animal often portrayed. They hunt for survival like ... any other carnivore."
Professor Ballard said the test to identify pure dingoes, pioneered by UNSW's Alan Wilton before his death from cancer in 2011, needed updating.Â
Having tested more than 4,500 dingoes and dingo/dog hybrids in the past decade, he estimates that less than 10 per cent would be wild-born pure desert dingoes.
"Sequencing the whole genome of the desert dingo will enable us to develop a next-generation dingo purity test ... which is needed if we are to save the dingo," he said.