Dingoes have been spotted feeding on dead members of their species Paul Meek, New South Wales Department of Primary Industries

It’s a dog-eat-dog world. Dingoes are one of the only species to have been filmed eating each other, despite having other sources of food.

The finding challenges the long-held assumption that animals only resort to cannibalism during famine.

Dingoes are introduced dogs that are subject to control measures in Australia because they kill livestock and native animals such as wallabies and koalas. As a result, farmers often lay traps for them around their properties.


Paul Meek at the New South Wales Department of Primary Industries first came across dingo cannibalism last year while trialling a new, more humane trap fitted with a chewable toxin to euthanise the dogs in the Strzelecki desert in South Australia.

“I had trapped a dog late in the evening and couldn’t face doing another autopsy, so I pushed it under a bush and decided to come back first thing in the morning,” he says. “When I returned, it was absolutely decimated – there was just a trail of intestines.”

Meek was perplexed. Dingoes are the only known nocturnal predators in that area, but have no shortage of food thanks to a local industrial kitchen that throws out scraps twice a day.

Caught on camera

To probe deeper, Meek set up cameras near the traps. Over a night of recording in each of 2015 and 2016, he captured multiple cases of dingoes feasting on dead, trapped ones (see video, below).

Even more shockingly, he observed dingo packs aggressively circling still-living dogs that had only just been trapped, as if deciding whether to have them for dinner.

“I can’t categorically say that that is what their intention was, but it certainly appeared as though these animals were summing up whether it was worth taking the risk of taking a dog down,” Meek says.

A deadly trap

Benjamin Allen at the University of Southern Queensland in Toowoomba has personally witnessed one episode of dingo cannibalism during a drought in central Australia in 2009. He attributed this cannibalism to food shortages.

“There was a pack of seven dingoes eating two dead dingoes – I was about 10 feet away,” he says.

The idea that dingoes may choose to eat other members of their own species when food is not hard to find is surprising, but fits with their opportunistic nature, Allen says. “I wouldn’t put it past them: they’re known to scavenge and they don’t give up a free meal easily.”

Meek agrees, noting that trapped dingoes provide an easy source of nutrition and energy in a competitive environment.

The discovery suggests that the subject of animal cannibalism needs to be reconsidered, he says.

Octopuses have also been found to engage in cannibalism when they have other food options, but there are few other documented examples in the wild. “There’s not a lot of information on cannibalism in the animal kingdom, and it is mainly thought to be driven by food scarcity,” says Meek. “This is why this is so unique and interesting.”

Journal reference: Australian Mammalogy, DOI: 10.1071/AM16018

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