Deadly Dingos

There are no babies, so bilbies will do.

Gotta be careful though, Burter — Space Dingo'll eat your Space Baby! Like me sister. (solemnly) ... poor Sheila.

— Jeice, Dragon Ball Z Abridged

Australian Wildlife is often stereotyped as wild and deadly. Part of this is Truth in Television — Australia is home to some of the world's deadliest arachnids and frogs — and there's also the fact that to most foreign viewers, creatures like kangaroos and wallabies are near-alien.

The dingos are no different. Notorious for their attacks on livestock and the infamous Azaria Chamberlain case, they've earned quite a reputation for themselves. They embody the most feared stereotypical traits of large canids—aggressive, uncontrollable and Harmful to Minors. They may elicit Why Did It Have to Be Snakes? and Papa Wolf reactions from characters. Or maybe they're just plain unlikable.

Consider this the Australian step-brother of Bears Are Bad News and Savage Wolves. Also compare Foul Fox. Could overlap with Predators Are Mean if the dingo wants to eat another animal.

See also Yowies and Bunyips and Drop Bears, Oh My for mythical Australian predators.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• Black Jack: Dingoes are the main antagonists in the episode "Wilderness Epidemic", where they are incorrectly portrayed as vicious predators that were introduced in Australia by colonialists and devastated the local ecosystem by overhunting the indigenous species. After contracting a disease, Black Jack is forced to operate on himself, but the smell of his blood attracts a pack of dingoes. He barely survives by using his scalpel as an Improvised Weapon, repelling the predators just long enough for his friends to find him and take him to safety.
• Lucy-May of the Southern Rainbow: Lucy-May rescues an injured dingo and begs her father to keep it as a pet. He bluntly tells her that if it ever harms her or anyone, he will put it down. His fears are disproven when it grows up to be a friendly, helpful little thing who doesn't have an ounce of violence in his body.

Comic Strips

• The Far Side: A strip depicting a daycare next to a dingo farm is captioned, "Trouble brewing", implying the dingoes want to eat, or otherwise attack, the kids.

Films — Animated

• Dingoes are some of the many antagonistic predators featured in Bilby. They attempt to eat the bilby protagonist.
• In Dot and the Kangaroo, the titular characters had to outrun a pack of dingos that were pets to a tribe of aborigines that were performing a ritual that scared Dot.
• During Megamind, Hal, talking to Roxanne, tells her that he doesn't like the way Megamind manages to kidnap her all the time and says that if he were Metro Man, he'd watch her "like a dingo watches a human baby." He recognizes after saying it that the sentence came out creepier than intended, and sure enough, he goes psycho when Roxanne rejects him even after he gains superpowers.

Films — Live Action

• Evil Angels is based on the real-life story of Alice Chamberlain, an Australian mother who was falsely accused of murdering her own daughter, Azaria, when in actuality she was eaten by a dingo. Months before the movie's release, a coroner's inquest conclusively proved that, in fact, a dingo ate Azaria Chamberlain, and she was acquitted of all charges.

Literature

• The Chronicles of Taras: The Dingo-snakes are amongst the many dangers that constantly try to kill the protagonist.
• Wombat Stew is about a dingo who wants to make a wombat into stew.

Video Games

• Crash Bandicoot: Dingodile, a genetically-engineered hybrid of a dingo and a crocodile, usually plays the role of an antagonist in the games and uses a flamethrower as a weapon. His Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time counterpart is more of an Anti-Hero, having given up villainy to open a restaurant with plenty of health code violations and having traded his flamethrower for a vacuum.
• Packs of dingoes are a minor threat in Far Cry 3.

Web Videos

• In Dragon Ball Z Abridged, Jeice reveals that his sister was eaten by a "space dingo" when she was an infant. This is likely a nod to the Azaria Chamberlain case since one of the series' Running Gags is how Jeice is from "Space Australia".

Western Animation

• Blinky Bill: The Dingo family are recurring antagonists throughout the first season, but they all made a Heel–Face Turn by its end. In particular, Danny Dingo was a Jerkass who was unpleasant to everyone around him. His main hobby was scamming people, and in one episode, he even tried to get the Greenpatchers fed to a group of feral cats. His younger siblings, Daisy, Meatball and Shifty, however, are friendlier to the townspeople, although they did follow along with Danny's plans on occasion.
• Koala Man: In The Handies, Allison, fed up of constantly losing matches in handball, is offered performance-enhancing drugs. After taking them, Allison slowly starts turning into a ferocious dingo. In a desperate bid to cure her, Koala Man subjects her to a Cooldown Hug. It works and she returns back to being human.
• The Simpsons
  • "Bart vs. Australia": When doing one of his usual prank calls, Bart calls Bruno Dundrige and the following conversation ensues:
    Bart: Hey, I think I hear a dingo eating your baby.
    (Bart hangs up the phone)
    Bruno: Yeah, well, I— Ooh! Oh! Oh, that's it. I'm gonna report this to me member of parliament.
  • "Lisa Gets An 'A'": Lisa plays a parody of Crash Bandicoot, where a dingo's objective is to eat seven crystal babies.
• Wild Kratts:
  • In "Koala Balloon", Chris, Martin and the titular koala baby are chased by a pack of dingoes. To throw them off, Martin creates a decoy of Koala Balloon made out of wood to fool them. It works, but only for a short time, as the dingoes quickly realize they were tricked and the trio is chased up a tree, forced to spend the night there due to the threatening dingoes on the ground.
  • In "Kickin' It With the Roos", a dingo chases after a group of kangaroos, including Chris and Martin, who are transformed kangaroos. Once the group gets to a watering hole, Roo Boss fights the dingo and attempts to drown him, after which the dingo quickly makes his escape.

Real Life

• The Azaria Chamberlain case. After her sudden disappearance, her parents were accused of murdering her, but they maintained that she had been killed by dingoes. Despite public opinion, they were eventually proven innocent when DNA evidence came out that proved their claim, as well as the fact that her jacket was seen outside a dingo's den.
• In 2001, a nine-year-old boy was killed by a dingo on Fraser Island. His brother was mauled, but luckily he made it out alive.

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