{"id":136525,"date":"2016-11-16T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-11-15T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tvaryny.com\/?p=136525"},"modified":"2026-09-02T12:37:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T09:37:15","slug":"new-guinea-singing-dog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tvaryny.com\/en\/breed-new-guinea-singing-dog","title":{"rendered":"New Guinea Singing Dog"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The <strong>New Guinea Singing Dog<\/strong> is a small primitive dog from the mountains of New Guinea, known above all for its voice: instead of repetitive barking it draws out a long howl, changing pitch abruptly as it goes. A layer of vivid claims has grown up around the breed \u2014 &#8220;extinct in the wild&#8221;, &#8220;a living copy of the first dog&#8221;, &#8220;rediscovered in 2016&#8221;. Some of it rests on research; some of it is a retelling of a retelling. Below we separate the two: first what the studies actually showed, then what they are said to have shown. More breed material on <a href=\"https:\/\/tvaryny.com\/en\">Tvaryny<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">New Guinea Singing Dog: the breed in brief<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is a small dog of primitive type: under the breed club&#8217;s standard, males stand 14\u201318 inches (36\u201346 cm) at the withers and bitches 13\u201317 inches (33\u201343 cm), weighing 17\u201330 pounds (8\u201314 kg). The look is fox-like \u2014 a wedge-shaped head, pricked ears, a dense double coat in red, sable or black-and-tan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The one thing worth knowing before you read on: almost everything we know about this breed rests on very small samples. The captive population descends from seven or eight founders. The nuclear genome of the wild highland dogs was read from three animals. The only quantitative comparison of the howl against other canids drew on two recording sources. That is not a reason to discard the material \u2014 it is a reason to read every figure together with its denominator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How these dogs were found: the archive against the retelling<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.tvaryny.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/singer-34_d600.jpg\" alt=\"New Guinea Singing Dog \u2014 how these dogs were found\" class=\"wp-image-136406\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.tvaryny.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/singer-34_d600.jpg 600w, https:\/\/cdn.tvaryny.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/singer-34_d600-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/cdn.tvaryny.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/singer-34_d600-330x220.jpg 330w, https:\/\/cdn.tvaryny.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/singer-34_d600-420x280.jpg 420w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The usual retelling runs like this: in 1957 Sir Ellis Troughton described the first specimen of the breed, having brought a pair of dogs from the Lavani Valley to Taronga Zoo in Sydney. Almost every part of that sentence is wrong, and it was not the breed&#8217;s critics who established it but the archival work of Peter Dwyer and Monica Minnegal, published in the <em>Memoirs of the Queensland Museum<\/em> in 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>The &#8220;Sir&#8221; is not Troughton.<\/strong> Ellis Troughton, a mammalogist at the Australian Museum, named the species <em>Canis hallstromi<\/em> in honour of Sir Edward Hallstrom, president of the Taronga Park Trust. In the retelling the title simply moved to the wrong man.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>The first specimen is not from 1957.<\/strong> The Mount Scratchley dog was collected in 1897 at about 2,100 metres, and Charles de Vis described it in the <em>Annals of the Queensland Museum<\/em> in 1911. What Troughton described in 1957 were two living zoo animals, not the first specimen.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>The dogs did not come from the Lavani Valley.<\/strong> Troughton wrote that the pair was obtained in 1956 by J. P. Sinclair and medical assistant Albert Speer &#8220;in the remote Lavani Valley&#8221;. But Sinclair and Speer were in that valley twice \u2014 for two days, 26\u201328 June 1955, as part of a 62-day government patrol, and for about a month in November 1955. The dogs given to Hallstrom were born more than three months after their last visit.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So what does the correspondence the researchers unearthed actually say? On 31 May 1956 Speer wrote to Hallstrom from the Duna station: he has &#8220;one of the local native dogs&#8221;, &#8220;a true type of the indigenous Papuan dog&#8221;, a male pup about two months old. He then calls both dogs &#8220;Kanaka dogs&#8221; \u2014 that is, the kind kept by local people. He named his first dog &#8220;Duna&#8221;, after the place and the language of his own station, not &#8220;Huri&#8221;, the language spoken in the Lavani Valley.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The researchers put it carefully and precisely: the available correspondence <em>does not reveal<\/em> either the provenance of these two dogs or whether they were wild-living or village-living. But the available evidence makes it more likely that they were the progeny of bitches owned by people and living in hamlets near the government post at Duna.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-heading wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The detail worth noticing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Both dogs reached Sydney by boat from Lae in March 1957. The female was <strong>already pregnant<\/strong> and, on the surviving records, whelped four pups about three weeks after arrival. That means the sire of the first captive litter stayed behind in New Guinea, and who he was is unknown. The detail is easy to miss, and it bears directly on how &#8220;pure&#8221; the founding line ever was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What the genetic studies actually showed<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The key paper is Surbakti and colleagues, PNAS 2020 (volume 117, pp. 24369\u201324376). Its findings are real and interesting, so here they are with the numbers attached.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>2016.<\/strong> The expedition reported 15 highland wild dogs near the Grasberg mine in the western half of the island. Photographs and faecal samples were collected, but they were not sufficient for nuclear genome analysis.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>2018.<\/strong> Over two weeks, 18 dogs were observed, 10 of them new. Two were captured alive and a third was found recently dead \u2014 apparently hit by a vehicle. Three samples in all. Two dogs were fitted with GPS collars and released.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Method.<\/strong> The Illumina CanineHD chip, 150,112 markers; 107,125 remained after pruning for linkage. The three highland dogs were compared with 1,346 dogs from 161 breeds, 25 dingoes, 16 captive singing dogs and 9 non-dog canids.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Result.<\/strong> The highland dogs formed a monophyletic clade with 100% bootstrap support alongside the captive singers and the dingoes. By genome share, 72% of them is closest to captive singers and dingoes, while 28% is closest to breed dogs. Independent methods returned the same magnitude: 28.8% by Treemix and 29.6% by qpAdm.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>The contrast with village dogs.<\/strong> In New Guinea village dogs the ratio is reversed: 87% of the genome from breed dogs and only 13% Oceanic. In Vietnam it is 11%, in Namibia less than 1%.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Diversity.<\/strong> Observed heterozygosity in the highland dogs is significantly higher than in the captive singers and higher than in dingoes. But it is also significantly <em>lower<\/em> than in New Guinea village dogs.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The wider context comes from Bergstr\u00f6m and colleagues in <em>Science<\/em> in 2020. There the New Guinea Singing Dog lineage is one of five ancestral dog lineages that must already have existed 10.9 thousand years ago \u2014 that is the radiocarbon date of the Karelian dog \u2014 and therefore, as the authors carefully put it, most likely before the Pleistocene\u2013Holocene boundary about 11.6 thousand years ago. The authors call it an unadmixed East Asian dog ancestry. Note the wording: this dates an ancient lineage <em>of dogs<\/em>, not an ancestor of dogs and not a halfway stage from the wolf.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A further measurement comes from a 2026 comparative paper in the journal <em>Genes<\/em>. In its table of seven ancient breeds, the New Guinea Singing Dog carries the lowest share of modern European admixture \u2014 0.3%, against 15.3% in the basenji, 13.1% in the chow chow, 7.0% in the dingo and 5.1% in the Tibetan mastiff. That is probably the single strongest figure in favour of the lineage&#8217;s isolation, and it comes from genomic data rather than from stories about the breed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u2026and what those studies are said to have shown<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now the gap between what was measured and what has been made of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>&#8220;The 2016 study proved the dogs found were singing dogs.&#8221;<\/strong> It did not. Mitochondrial DNA from 9 of 24 scat samples gave haplotype A29 \u2014 not A79, which is unique to singing dogs. A29 occurs in dingoes, in singing dogs, in some Asian and Arctic breeds and in village dogs. The PNAS authors say so plainly: the result is not specific to the breed and generalises to dogs of East Asia and Oceania as a whole.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>&#8220;It is the same population, unchanged.&#8221;<\/strong> The work showed kinship \u2014 and at the same time about 28\u201330% breed-dog admixture in the highland dogs themselves. An attempt to pin that admixture down more precisely through F4 ratios gave a spread from 15 to 50%, but the z-scores were insignificant in every combination. So the admixture exists; its exact size does not.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>&#8220;The breed has been rediscovered.&#8221;<\/strong> The authors mark the limit of their own conclusion in two sentences that usually vanish from the retellings: &#8220;Analyses in this work encompassed only three individuals&#8221;, and the size and extent of the highland dog population &#8220;remains to be documented&#8221;.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>&#8220;Extinct in the wild.&#8221;<\/strong> This was framed as a hypothesis, not an established status. The PNAS authors word it exactly that way: the breed&#8217;s scarcity, combined with the fact that none has been captured or exported since the late 1970s, &#8220;supports the hypothesis&#8221; that it is extinct in the wild. Before 2016 the wild highland dogs had been photographed only twice \u2014 in 1989 and 2012.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>&#8220;The oldest breed&#8221; and &#8220;the ancestor of all dogs.&#8221;<\/strong> Neither follows from the genomic data. Bergstr\u00f6m dates a <em>lineage<\/em>, not a breed; today&#8217;s captive dogs are the end of a long road, not its beginning.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The most interesting part is that the paper&#8217;s principal opponents <strong>accept<\/strong> its genetic conclusion. Dwyer and Minnegal, who criticise the idea of a discrete highland population most sharply, write in as many words that they accept Surbakti&#8217;s conclusion: captive singers and wild highland dogs belong to a single genetic population, allied to dingoes and distinct from breed dogs. Their objection is different \u2014 they hold that this population was never confined to the highlands but took in the village dogs of the whole island before European colonisation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And the field still has no single answer. A 2025 review in <em>Evolution Letters<\/em> calls the New Guinea Singing Dog the only canid group that significantly shares genetic variation with the dingo \u2014 and in the same paragraph notes that the domestication status of both remains unclear: some analyses make them a basal lineage relative to domestic dogs, others place the dingo inside the Asian and Arctic clade of domestic dogs. Similar in fate and isolation, but shaped on another continent, is the <a href=\"https:\/\/tvaryny.com\/en\/breed-carolina-dog-american-dingo\">Carolina Dog<\/a>, and the arguments around it have the same shape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Seven or eight founders: where the captive population really came from<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Every source gives almost the same number of founders \u2014 but they describe the origin of those founders in opposite terms, and that is the sharpest disagreement in the whole subject.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>PNAS 2020: the captive dogs descend &#8220;from only eight partially related founders&#8221;.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Koler-Matznick and colleagues, 2007: &#8220;the current captive singing dog population is descended from eight specimens <em>not directly caught in the wild<\/em>&#8221; \u2014 while adding that this does not mean they were village dogs.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Dwyer and Minnegal, 2022, after checking the archive: &#8220;The captive population of NGSDs is derived from seven or eight founding members. None was captured as a wild-living dog.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Then comes what is documented. In 1976 a group of dogs was taken from the Eipo region of what was then Irian Jaya to the Kiel institute in Germany; even their number differs between sources \u2014 four or five. Those dogs were village dogs. In 1987 a female called Olga, a descendant of them, was sent to the United States. Janice Koler-Matznick, founder of the breed&#8217;s conservation society, wrote in 2018 that &#8220;today all Singers in the USA trace back to Olga on the female line&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The practical consequence for science is this: the maternal genome of the entire American population comes from a village dog of the Eipo region with no documented wild ancestors. That does not make her &#8220;not the real thing&#8221; \u2014 but it is worth holding in mind whenever you read a claim about a &#8220;wild gene pool in captivity&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-heading wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>What this means for inbreeding<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In 2018 Cairns and colleagues calculated inbreeding coefficients for five singing dogs across 58,512 autosomal markers. Against the combined dingo-and-singer reference population they came to 0.457 \u00b7 0.671 \u00b7 0.594 \u00b7 0.620 \u00b7 0.461 \u2014 a mean of 0.561.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There is a subtlety here worth stating openly. The same five dogs, measured only against one another, come out near zero: \u22120.289, 0.218, 0.034, 0.096, \u22120.28. That is neither a contradiction nor an error. It is how the statistic behaves: inside a population that descends entirely from a handful of founders, the baseline has already shifted, and against that baseline no individual looks inbred. High inbreeding only becomes visible when you compare with a wider population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The total captive population, on the PNAS 2020 estimate, is no more than 200\u2013300 dogs worldwide. The breed club adds that fewer than a few dozen now remain in zoos and collections, and the majority of American singers, on that same club\u2019s account, live as companion animals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The song: what could actually be measured<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"720\" height=\"540\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.tvaryny.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/novogvinejskaja-pojushhaja-sobaka-f9c68be.webp\" alt=\"New Guinea Singing Dog \u2014 the song of the breed\" class=\"wp-image-136286\" style=\"width:448px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.tvaryny.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/novogvinejskaja-pojushhaja-sobaka-f9c68be.webp 720w, https:\/\/cdn.tvaryny.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/novogvinejskaja-pojushhaja-sobaka-f9c68be-300x225.webp 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The breed&#8217;s name is not a metaphor. The club standard describes its defining trait as a &#8220;dramatic ability to vary the pitch of their howl&#8221;. The dog does not bark repetitively; instead it has a complex vocal repertoire of yelps, whines and single-note howls. When several animals howl at once, the voices lock together into what owners call a chorus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And now the part that appears almost nowhere else. The claim that this howl is unlike that of any other canid population sits in the PNAS 2020 paper itself. But there is one quantitative cross-species comparison of howls that the breed took part in \u2014 Kershenbaum and colleagues, <em>Behavioural Processes<\/em> 2016. Here is what happened in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>More than 2,000 howls from 13 canid species and subspecies were analysed; the pairwise distance matrix measured 2,005 \u00d7 2,005.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The New Guinea Singing Dog contributed 344 howls \u2014 but from only <strong>two<\/strong> recording sources.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>In the test of within-species similarity of howl-type use, the breed scored p = 0.899, which is nothing at all. For comparison: coyote 0.019, red wolf 0.007, Arctic wolf 0.006, domestic dog 0.003, North African wolf less than 0.001.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>In classification by howl-type-usage fingerprint, the breed was identified correctly in 0% of cases. The algorithm&#8217;s commonest guesses were the domestic dog and the North African wolf.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">How should this be read? Carefully, and in both directions. Two recording sources is very little, and the authors themselves write that they lack the data to take it further. So the result does not mean the song is ordinary. It means something else: <strong>the distinctiveness of this vocalisation has still not been shown quantitatively<\/strong>, even though it is repeated as an established fact. Tellingly, a co-author of that paper is Janice Koler-Matznick of the breed&#8217;s conservation society \u2014 so the figure did not come from sceptics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There is a second side to it. Chorus howling is documented in more than the highland dogs. Patrol officer James Taylor recorded in May 1939 how his carriers bought more than fifty puppies in a mountain settlement: at night &#8220;they did not bark, but now and again one would begin howling and the rest would join in&#8221;. That is a description of village dogs, not wild ones. A comparison with other &#8220;barkless&#8221; breeds is useful too: the <a href=\"https:\/\/tvaryny.com\/en\/breed-basenji\">Basenji<\/a> likewise does not bark in the ordinary sense, but its sound is closer to a yodel than to a sustained note that shifts in pitch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What the singing dog looks like under the standard<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"720\" height=\"540\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.tvaryny.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/novogvinejskaja-pojushhaja-sobaka-fa2ef38.webp\" alt=\"New Guinea Singing Dog \u2014 appearance under the standard\" class=\"wp-image-136301\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.tvaryny.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/novogvinejskaja-pojushhaja-sobaka-fa2ef38.webp 720w, https:\/\/cdn.tvaryny.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/novogvinejskaja-pojushhaja-sobaka-fa2ef38-300x225.webp 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The current description of the breed is maintained by a club \u2014 the New Guinea Singing Dog Club of America; on its own page the club states plainly that the standard is based on the original UKC text. Here is what it says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Head.<\/strong> Wedge-shaped from both above and the side, with a pronounced stop. The back corners of the lips turn up slightly, giving the impression of a grin.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Eyes.<\/strong> Small, <em>triangular<\/em> and obliquely set, ranging from dark amber to very dark brown; the white often shows in the inner corners. The &#8220;almond-shaped&#8221; description that circulates in reference books is not in the standard.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Ears.<\/strong> Erect, small, triangular, set wide apart; when the dog is alert they tilt forward at roughly 60 degrees to the top of the skull.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Body.<\/strong> In side profile, from point of shoulder to point of rump, about 20% longer than the height at the withers. The nose is always solid black.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Coat.<\/strong> Short, dense and double; the longest hair lies on the shoulders, the centre of the back and the backs of the thighs, but should not exceed about one and a half inches. The breed is shown in completely natural condition with no trimming at all \u2014 not even the whiskers.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Colour.<\/strong> Red (from fawn to deep rust), sable and black-and-tan. White markings are common but must not make up more than a third of the total colour and are permitted only on the muzzle, face, neck, belly, legs, feet and tail tip.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Tail.<\/strong> Reaches at least to the hock; when the dog is alert it is carried over the back in a gentle curve like a question mark. A slight kink at mid-length is common in the breed, and the standard says explicitly that it is not a fault.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Two things in that text deserve separate attention. The first is the description of flexibility: the dog &#8220;can pass their bodies through any opening wide enough to admit their head&#8221;. That is the sourced form of a claim that turned into &#8220;flexible collarbones&#8221; in the reference books; dogs have no functional clavicles at all, and the explanation lies in the build of the ribcage and the mobility of the shoulder blades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The second is a line about cryptorchidism that is rare in any breed standard. Word for word: &#8220;Because of the high percentage of unilateral cryptorchids in the still small NGSD population, unilateral cryptorchidism is acceptable but not preferred.&#8221; Bilateral cryptorchidism remains a disqualification. So the standard officially tolerates a developmental defect because the gene pool is too small to select against it \u2014 and it names the reason itself. Extreme viciousness or shyness and an unprovoked attack on a person are also disqualifying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Size: why the figures wander between references<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The standard splits height by sex: males 14\u201318 inches at the withers, bitches 13\u201317 inches. In centimetres that is 36\u201346 and 33\u201343 respectively. Weight is given as a single range \u2014 17\u201330 pounds, that is 8\u201314 kg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That is where most of the disagreement between references comes from. The commonest mistake is to take the <em>male<\/em> range (36\u201346 cm) and present it as the breed&#8217;s range, silently dropping the bitches. We did exactly that in this page&#8217;s own card until we checked it against the standard; the card now carries both ranges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There is also an independent measurement from a scientific source: in the 2026 comparative table, the mean adult mass of a captive dog of this breed is given as 11.7 kg, citing Corbett&#8217;s review in the IUCN Canid Action Plan of 2004. That is a mean rather than a range, and it falls inside the standard&#8217;s 8\u201314 kg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Temperament: the standard, the owners and one study<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"500\" height=\"333\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.tvaryny.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/unnamed.jpg\" alt=\"New Guinea Singing Dog \u2014 temperament and behaviour\" class=\"wp-image-136316\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.tvaryny.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/unnamed.jpg 500w, https:\/\/cdn.tvaryny.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/unnamed-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/cdn.tvaryny.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/unnamed-330x220.jpg 330w, https:\/\/cdn.tvaryny.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/unnamed-420x280.jpg 420w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The standard describes the breed like this: active, lively and alert, constantly exploring the environment with every sense. Gentle and affectionate with people they know, but aloof with strangers. They can be aggressive towards other dogs, especially of the same sex. The hunting drive is intense and &#8220;may take over when prey is detected, despite any previous training&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The breed club adds practical observations that are more use than generalities: by two or three years of age most singers noticeably settle and start to prefer long naps to long walks; fear of strange people and dogs is common, particularly in dogs that came out of neglect cases; and off the lead they cannot be relied on. The club compares the temperament to that of the <a href=\"https:\/\/tvaryny.com\/en\/breed-shiba-inu\">Shiba Inu<\/a> and the basenji \u2014 that is, to primitive breeds rather than working ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There is also a study of owners \u2014 Sumridge and colleagues, <em>Anthrozo\u00f6s<\/em> 2021. It compared 55 singing dogs living as companion animals with 1,101 dogs from five primitive FCI subgroups, using the C-BARQ behaviour questionnaire and the Lexington Attachment to Pets Scale. On the authors&#8217; own account of the results, the singers showed <em>greater fear<\/em> than dogs in some of the subgroups and were more likely than dogs in all subgroups to urinate on objects \u2014 which the authors offer as an explanation for why a higher share of them is housed outdoors. Their owners nonetheless scored their own attachment just as highly as owners of other primitive dogs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The breed club also reads that same paper as showing that singers display markedly less stranger-directed aggression than other primitive breeds. We have not read the full text, so we give that part as the club&#8217;s reading rather than as our own claim. What matters for an owner: fear and aggression are different states, and the club stresses that in these dogs fear usually does not turn into aggression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-heading wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>What the brain study found<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In 2025 the <em>Journal of Neuroscience<\/em> published a study comparing MRI scans of 85 dogs: 72 modern breed dogs and 13 &#8220;premodern&#8221; ones \u2014 ancient breeds, village dogs and New Guinea singing dogs. The modern breeds showed a wider cortex, and it was the cortex that predicted trainability scores. The premodern dogs showed a larger amygdala, and it was the amygdala that predicted fear scores.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Two caveats are obligatory. First, the singers are only part of those thirteen dogs, and the paper gives no separate figure for the breed, so this is a statement about the group, not about the breed. Second, the study&#8217;s conclusion runs against what is usually said about domestication: the authors write plainly that their results contrast with the long-standing view that domestication consistently reduces brain size and cognitive capacity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Health: what is known, and how to read it<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"750\" height=\"582\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.tvaryny.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/novogvinejskaja-pojushhaja-sobaka-a53b289.webp\" alt=\"New Guinea Singing Dog \u2014 health and genetics\" class=\"wp-image-136376\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.tvaryny.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/novogvinejskaja-pojushhaja-sobaka-a53b289.webp 750w, https:\/\/cdn.tvaryny.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/novogvinejskaja-pojushhaja-sobaka-a53b289-300x233.webp 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The breed is often credited with &#8220;natural&#8221; health on the grounds that it was shaped without human selection. We make no such claim: the absence of a description of diseases is a gap in the data rather than a certificate of health, and a population descending entirely from seven or eight founders carries, by definition, an elevated risk of recessive conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The breed club maintains a separate health page and names four conditions. We give them as the club itself puts them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Pancreatitis.<\/strong> The club writes of a genetic predisposition. Fatty food, certain medications and excess weight all raise the risk. Diabetes has a high comorbidity with it.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Diabetes.<\/strong> Described as a recent concern in the community; cases, the club says, are still being investigated.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Glaucoma.<\/strong> Likewise a recent theme, with cases still under investigation.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Unilateral cryptorchidism.<\/strong> Not a disease in the usual sense, but the standard names its high frequency in the population outright \u2014 see the section on the standard above.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-heading wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Anaesthesia: how to raise it with your vet<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sensitivity to anaesthesia deserves its own paragraph, because it belongs to exactly the class of claim that is easy to retell more strongly than the source states it. The breed club reports that many owners describe heightened sensitivity, and <strong>itself calls the phenomenon under-researched<\/strong>. On owner reports, what is described is a risk of cardiac arrest under anaesthesia or of not waking from it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We do not turn that into a breed trait: owner reports and a measured risk are different things. But the practical advice loses nothing by it: tell your vet about the reported sensitivity in advance, discuss monitoring and the ability to reverse the drugs quickly, and settle routine jobs such as nail trims with training rather than sedation. It is also worth knowing that the club now describes the former advice to use a &#8220;greyhound protocol&#8221; as no longer applicable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And a general rule for a rare breed: ask the breeder for the parents&#8217; screening results, and do not accept &#8220;we never have any of that&#8221; as an answer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Lifespan: why we do not print a range<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is one of the rare cases where showing where a figure came from is more honest than showing the figure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The only number the peer-reviewed literature assigns to this breed is 15 years, and it sits in the comparative table of that 2026 paper. But look at where it got there from. For 118 modern breeds, the same paper drew lifespans from the Finnish Kennel Club database: at least 80 recorded deaths per breed, birth cohorts of 1988\u20132002, with deaths from extrinsic causes removed. For the New Guinea Singing Dog it took the midpoint of a range from the breed page of a commercial DNA-testing company, which gives 12\u201318 years. The midpoint of that range is precisely the &#8220;15&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The breed club puts it differently and more cautiously: with careful management singers live well into their teens, and some owners report dogs as old as twenty. The foundation working with the wild population lists the study of longevity, mortality factors and mortality rates as a separate line in its research agenda \u2014 that is, the field itself treats the question as open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So we do not print a range we would be willing to sign. The card carries a single figure \u2014 15 years, the same one the peer-reviewed paper used; treat it as a marker rather than as a measured quantity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Who recognises the breed \u2014 and what the law calls it<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Here the breed stands apart even among primitive dogs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>FCI.<\/strong> The FCI&#8217;s alphabetical nomenclature, harvested in full across every letter, holds 362 entries, and the New Guinea Singing Dog is not among them.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>UKC.<\/strong> The UKC&#8217;s current official list of recognised breeds runs to 365 rows, and the breed is not on it either; the Sighthound and Pariah group lists other pariah breeds. This is not our guess: the breed club itself writes that singers were shown in UKC conformation <em>in the 1990s<\/em> and can today be exhibited with the American Rare Breed Association.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>The standard.<\/strong> The breed is maintained by a club rather than a registry: the current standard text is published by the breed club and, on its own account, is based on the original UKC text.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Then there is the question of what to call the animal at all. The breed club itself lists, with citations, what it has been called in the literature: a domestic dog, a feral dog, a village dog, a free-ranging dog, a wild-living dog and a wild dog. Six different classifications, each published. The veterinary reference <em>Fowler&#8217;s Zoo and Wild Animal Medicine<\/em> assigns the dingo and the New Guinea Singing Dog to feral populations of domestic dogs that have reverted to a wild state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That argument has an entirely practical consequence, and it shows in two documents pointing in opposite directions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On 18 April 2016 the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service of the United States Department of Agriculture announced that it had always regulated dingoes and New Guinea singing dogs <em>as dogs<\/em> under the Animal Welfare Act, and would now regulate them <em>as exotic animals<\/em> \u2014 as it does coyotes and African wild dogs. The stated basis, in the announcement&#8217;s own words: these animals are genetically different from domesticated dogs, and most scientists point to this fact as sufficient to classify them as a separate subspecies. Licensees were given 60 days \u2014 until 17 June 2016 \u2014 to comply with the requirements of Subpart F of the standards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yet in 2019 the working group on <em>Canis<\/em> taxonomy convened by the IUCN SSC Canid Specialist Group and CIBIO-InBIO reached the opposite conclusion: dingoes and New Guinea singing dogs are feral domestic dogs, <em>Canis familiaris<\/em>, and for that reason <strong>should not be assessed for the IUCN Red List<\/strong> at all. The group noted separately that this denies neither their ecological role as top predators in fragile island environments nor their socio-cultural value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So the American regulator rests on a claim about a separate subspecies that the relevant IUCN taxonomy group declined to support three years later. The practical conclusion for a reader is simple: find out this animal&#8217;s status in your own country in advance, because it depends on whose classification the local law follows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There is a nomenclatural layer too. Troughton proposed the name <em>Canis hallstromi<\/em> in 1957 \u2014 but 130 years earlier, in 1827, Ren\u00e9-Primev\u00e8re Lesson had already named the dogs of this region <em>Canis familiaris novaehiberniae<\/em>, and in 1879 Edward Ramsay described <em>Canis familiaris<\/em> var. <em>papuensis<\/em>. Troughton declared Ramsay&#8217;s name invalid without giving reasons. If the dogs of New Guinea and New Ireland are a single gene pool, both later names are junior synonyms of Lesson&#8217;s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Keeping one: fencing, space and escape artists<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"720\" height=\"540\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.tvaryny.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/novogvinejskaja-pojushhaja-sobaka-24f056c.webp\" alt=\"New Guinea Singing Dog \u2014 keeping and fencing\" class=\"wp-image-136331\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.tvaryny.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/novogvinejskaja-pojushhaja-sobaka-24f056c.webp 720w, https:\/\/cdn.tvaryny.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/novogvinejskaja-pojushhaja-sobaka-24f056c-300x225.webp 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The owner&#8217;s main engineering problem is the fence. The standard supplies the criterion to design it against: the dog will go through any opening wide enough to admit its head. So the thing to measure is not whether the body will fit but the width of the narrowest gap at head height \u2014 and then add the ability to climb and to dig.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The fence must be solid, with no gaps at head height, protected against digging below and against climbing above.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Check gates and latches separately: the breed is credited with opening simple catches, and although we cite no verified source for that, an extra bolt will do no harm.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Walks on the lead only. The breed club calls singers unreliable off lead in as many words.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Small pets and a dog of this breed in the same space is a combination the standard treats unambiguously: the hunting drive may take over despite training.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The coat is undemanding: short and double, needing regular brushing during moults and nothing more elaborate. The breed is not trimmed at all \u2014 the standard requires it to be shown in completely natural condition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If what you want is a dog that will guard a perimeter calmly rather than try to defeat it, this is not the breed: the steadier <a href=\"https:\/\/tvaryny.com\/en\/breed-panda-shepherd-german-shepherd-panda\">Panda Shepherd<\/a> is far better suited to classic territorial guarding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Training and socialisation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"750\" height=\"582\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.tvaryny.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/novogvinejskaja-pojushhaja-sobaka-9a676b3.webp\" alt=\"New Guinea Singing Dog \u2014 training and socialisation\" class=\"wp-image-136391\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.tvaryny.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/novogvinejskaja-pojushhaja-sobaka-9a676b3.webp 750w, https:\/\/cdn.tvaryny.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/novogvinejskaja-pojushhaja-sobaka-9a676b3-300x233.webp 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The breed club describes singers as intelligent and easily bored: without an occupation of their own they will find one, at the expense of your furniture, cabinets, houseplants and garden. The formats the club lists from practice are scent work, rally, obedience, barn hunt, tricks and puzzles. Some dogs of the breed work as therapy dogs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Method matters. The club warns outright that compulsion and aversives will leave both of you miserable. Positive reinforcement works; mechanical pressure does not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Socialisation starts as early as possible and continues for a long time. Fear of strange people and dogs is common in the breed, and the club notes particularly that dogs which have been through neglect or insufficient early socialisation struggle with it most. This is not the same thing as aggression, and it has to be worked with as fear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And what not to expect from the breed: herding work. A dog of this breed will not gather a flock the way the <a href=\"https:\/\/tvaryny.com\/en\/breed-brazilian-shepherd-ovelheiro-gaucho\">Brazilian Shepherd Gaucho<\/a> does. The standard describes a different program \u2014 detect the prey and run it down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Feeding<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1080\" height=\"720\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.tvaryny.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/all-about-the-extremely-rare-new-guinea-singing-dog-56851692de23b.webp\" alt=\"New Guinea Singing Dog \u2014 feeding\" class=\"wp-image-136421\" style=\"width:596px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.tvaryny.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/all-about-the-extremely-rare-new-guinea-singing-dog-56851692de23b.webp 1080w, https:\/\/cdn.tvaryny.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/all-about-the-extremely-rare-new-guinea-singing-dog-56851692de23b-300x200.webp 300w, https:\/\/cdn.tvaryny.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/all-about-the-extremely-rare-new-guinea-singing-dog-56851692de23b-1024x683.webp 1024w, https:\/\/cdn.tvaryny.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/all-about-the-extremely-rare-new-guinea-singing-dog-56851692de23b-768x512.webp 768w, https:\/\/cdn.tvaryny.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/all-about-the-extremely-rare-new-guinea-singing-dog-56851692de23b-330x220.webp 330w, https:\/\/cdn.tvaryny.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/all-about-the-extremely-rare-new-guinea-singing-dog-56851692de23b-420x280.webp 420w, https:\/\/cdn.tvaryny.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/all-about-the-extremely-rare-new-guinea-singing-dog-56851692de23b-615x410.webp 615w, https:\/\/cdn.tvaryny.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/all-about-the-extremely-rare-new-guinea-singing-dog-56851692de23b-860x573.webp 860w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1080px) 100vw, 1080px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Here the breed has one concrete reason for care, and it is not a general canine one. The breed club describes a predisposition to pancreatitis and names three factors that raise the risk: fatty food, certain medications and excess weight. That is the practical frame for feeding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>A stable weight matters more than the composition of the diet.<\/strong> For a dog with this much mobility and this described predisposition, it is the most effective lever available.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Keep fat under control.<\/strong> Abrupt fatty additions and table scraps are exactly the scenario the club advises against.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Discuss medications with your vet.<\/strong> The club lists certain drugs among the risk factors; that is a question for a clinician, not for the internet.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>There are no exact proportions that hold for every dog<\/strong> \u2014 they depend on age, activity and neutering. A table of percentages here will not replace weight control.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Do not feed from a raised bowl. A prospective cohort of 1,637 dogs attributed about 20% of bloat cases in large breeds and about 52% in giant ones to the raised bowl, and no study has ever shown that it lowers the risk. This breed itself is not named among those prone to bloat in any large study \u2014 but there is no reason to raise the bowl either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Pros and cons of the breed<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"259\" height=\"194\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.tvaryny.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/gallery-223232.jpg\" alt=\"New Guinea Singing Dog \u2014 pros and cons\" class=\"wp-image-136346\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-heading wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Pros<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>A voice you will hear nowhere else.<\/strong> The ability to shift the pitch of the howl, smoothly and abruptly, is described in the standard as the breed&#8217;s defining trait.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Athleticism and flexibility.<\/strong> The mobility the standard gives a paragraph of its own, and which lends the breed a gait that seems to float above the ground.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Minimal coat care.<\/strong> A short double coat and no trimming whatsoever.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>A capacity for work that uses the mind.<\/strong> The club lists scent work, rally, obedience and tricks as formats the breed genuinely competes in.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Attachment to its own people.<\/strong> The standard describes the breed as gentle and affectionate with the people it knows.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-heading wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Cons<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Escapes.<\/strong> An opening the width of a head is already a door. The fence has to be an engineering decision, not a fence.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Hunting drive.<\/strong> The standard says outright that it may take over despite any previous training.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>The voice as a neighbourhood problem.<\/strong> What makes the breed unique carries through a wall.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Conflict with same-sex dogs.<\/strong> Named plainly in the text of the standard.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>A very narrow gene pool and thin health data.<\/strong> Seven or eight founders, four conditions named by the club, and not one large study of the breed&#8217;s health.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Legal uncertainty.<\/strong> The breed is on neither the FCI nor the UKC list, and its classification in different countries may differ from that of an ordinary dog.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Interesting things about the New Guinea Singing Dog<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>The lowest European admixture among ancient breeds.<\/strong> In the comparative table of seven ancient breeds it stands at 0.3%, below the dingo, the chow chow, the basenji and the Tibetan mastiff.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>The wild dogs were trapped using coyotes.<\/strong> On the 2018 expedition the animals were conditioned to enter cage traps using scent lures and recordings of North American coyote calls, played to elicit an answering howl.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>A standard that admits its own defect.<\/strong> The line about acceptable unilateral cryptorchidism is a rare case of a breed standard writing down why it cannot ask for more.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>A description from 1606.<\/strong> Diego de Prado, describing the coast of New Guinea, mentioned &#8220;small dumb dogs that neither bark nor howl&#8221; \u2014 while on another island the dogs howled all night, &#8220;which caused terror&#8221;.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>A kinked tail is normal.<\/strong> The standard calls a slight kink at mid-tail common in the breed and expressly forbids treating it as a structural fault.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>A range above four kilometres.<\/strong> The observed altitude range of the wild highland dogs exceeds 4,000 metres above sea level.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Frequently asked questions about the breed (FAQ)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-heading wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Is this breed really extinct in the wild?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It was framed as a hypothesis rather than an established fact. The grounds were that none had been captured or exported since the late 1970s and that before 2016 the wild highland dogs had been photographed only twice. The 2020 work gave genetic grounds for thinking the ancestral population is alive \u2014 but from three animals, and the authors themselves write that the size and extent of that population remain to be documented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-heading wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Is it a dog or a wild animal?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There is no single answer, and that is not an evasion. In the literature the breed has been called a domestic dog, a feral dog, a village dog, a free-ranging dog, a wild-living dog and a wild dog \u2014 six different classifications, listed with citations by the breed club itself. The IUCN working group on <em>Canis<\/em> taxonomy concluded in 2019 that these are feral domestic dogs, <em>Canis familiaris<\/em>, and that they should therefore not be assessed for the Red List; veterinary references place them in the same category. In practice this means finding out the animal&#8217;s legal status in your own country in advance: the American regulator, for one, has treated them as exotic animals rather than dogs since 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-heading wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Can they live with other dogs?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The standard names possible aggression towards other dogs, especially of the same sex. That is not a prohibition but a demand for planning: a mixed-sex pair with a gradual introduction carries less risk than two dogs of the same sex.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-heading wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Are they suitable for families with children?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is a breed for experienced owners, not a first dog. The main reasons are the strong hunting drive, which the standard describes as capable of taking over despite training, and the common fear of strangers. The club stresses that in these dogs fear usually does not turn into aggression. If there are small children or small animals in the house, weigh it honestly before you choose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-heading wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Why do they &#8220;sing&#8221;?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Instead of repetitive barking the breed uses a sustained howl with an abrupt shift of pitch; several dogs take it up from one another and a chorus results. The standard calls this ability the breed&#8217;s defining trait. It is worth knowing that chorus howling is documented in New Guinea village dogs too \u2014 from at least 1939.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Video about the breed<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"New Guinea Singing Dog Facts (History, Temperament, &amp; More)\" width=\"1170\" height=\"658\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/pJL9GVTciik?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The New Guinea Singing Dog is not merely a rare breed; it is a genuine living relic of evolution that has miraculously survived to this day within\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":136273,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[7285,7057],"moimportance":[],"class_list":["post-136525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dogs-breeds","tag-dogs-with-erect-ears","tag-hunting-dogs"],"views":61,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tvaryny.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tvaryny.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tvaryny.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tvaryny.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tvaryny.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136525"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tvaryny.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":136531,"href":"https:\/\/tvaryny.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136525\/revisions\/136531"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tvaryny.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tvaryny.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tvaryny.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tvaryny.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136525"},{"taxonomy":"moimportance","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tvaryny.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/moimportance?post=136525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}