New Guinea singing dog
The New Guinea singing dog or New Guinea Highland dog is an ancient (basal) lineage of dog found in the New Guinea Highlands, on the island of New Guinea. Once considered to be a separate species in its own right, under the name Canis hallstromi, it is closely related to the Australian dingo. The dog is relatively unusual among canines; it is one of the few to be considered "barkless", and is known for the unusual "yodel"-like style of vocalizing that gives it its name.
| New Guinea singing dog | |||||||||
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| Other names | New Guinea Highland dog, Hallstrom's dog | ||||||||
| Common nicknames | Singers | ||||||||
| Origin | New Guinea | ||||||||
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| Dog (domestic dog) | |||||||||
In 1989, the Australian mammalogist Tim Flannery took a photo of a black-and-tan dog in Telefomin District. He noted that these dogs lived with local tribal peoples in the mountains, and that feral populations lived in the alpine and sub-alpine grasslands of the Star Mountains and the Wharton Range. The photo was published in his book, Mammals of New Guinea. In 2012, Australian wilderness-adventure guide Tom Hewett took a photo of a tawny, thick-coated dog in the Puncak Mandala region of West Papua, Indonesia. In 2016, a literature review found no definitive evidence that the earliest possible dogs, within captive populations of New Guinea singing dogs, were wild animals; successive generations of puppies were raised as members of village populations, thus being domestic dogs.
In 2020, a genetic study found that the New Guinea Highland wild dogs were genetically basal to the dingo and the New Guinea singing dog, and therefore the potential originator of both.