Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogelbaum. Here just a heads up. This episode deals
Speaker 1: with the accidental death of an infant. We're not getting graphic,
Speaker 1: but if that's not something you're up for today, go
Speaker 1: ahead and skip this one. And hey, take care of yourself, okay,
Speaker 1: all right. There is a good chance that, especially if
Speaker 1: you have consumed any kind of pop culture from the
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties, you've heard the phrase a dingo ate my baby, exclaimed,
Speaker 1: usually in a bad Australian accent. You too might have
Speaker 1: said it been laughed heartily with your sick o friends. Yet,
Speaker 1: if you weren't watching the news in the early nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: the chances are also good that you haven't heard the real,
Speaker 1: unfunny story behind this statement. So today let's talk about
Speaker 1: dingoes and whether they're dangerous and how they've ever gotten
Speaker 1: near a baby in the first place. Dingoes are Israelia's
Speaker 1: native wild dog that came to the Outback from Southern
Speaker 1: Asia thousands of years ago. They're similar to feral dogs
Speaker 1: in the US. Just to catch your name, the average
Speaker 1: dingo is lean, with a body length of about four feet.
Speaker 1: That's about one and a quarter meters and a weight
Speaker 1: around thirty pounds or fourteen kilos, so the size of
Speaker 1: a big, scrawny golden retriever, but with pointy ears, a
Speaker 1: drooping tail, a pointed face, and a short coat in
Speaker 1: shades of white, gold, orange, red, and black. Dingoes usually
Speaker 1: travel in packs, though there are some lone wolf dingoes.
Speaker 1: A pack will be led by a dominant dingo couple,
Speaker 1: and that pair will typically mate for life. They're also
Speaker 1: typically the only dingoes in the pack that will breed successfully,
Speaker 1: as they suppress other breeding attempts and have even been
Speaker 1: known to kill other pups born in the pack. They'll
Speaker 1: breed once a year with about five pups in the litter,
Speaker 1: and raising those pups is a whole pack affair. They
Speaker 1: have a life span of around seven or eight years
Speaker 1: in the wild and up to fifteen in captivity. Dingoes
Speaker 1: are opportunistic hunters and scavengers. They eat mostly rabbits, rodents, birds, lizards, foliage,
Speaker 1: and nuts. Like wolves, they're extremely smart, as smarter than
Speaker 1: domestic dogs except yours. Of course. They're cute too, but
Speaker 1: wily and unlike your dog. Dingoes have wrists that rotate
Speaker 1: that means they can use their paws like hands. They
Speaker 1: also have much bigger canine teeth than most domestic dogs.
Speaker 1: Their limbs are double jointed too, and they can turn
Speaker 1: their necks one hundred and eighty degrees around. They run fast,
Speaker 1: climb with ease, and jump high. They also howl like wolves.
Speaker 1: You might want to remember these facts for any future
Speaker 1: camping excursions. Perhaps because of their intelligence, These canines are
Speaker 1: generally thought of as pests by humans. Our tumultuous relationship
Speaker 1: with them can be traced back at least as far
Speaker 1: as seventeen eighty eight. That's when the British first took
Speaker 1: sheep to New South Wales, giving dingoes a new easy prey.
Speaker 1: By the eighteen eighties, dingoes were invading farms and rural communities.
Speaker 1: The solution was to build the Dingo Fence, a fence
Speaker 1: that crosses Australia for about three thousand, five hundred miles
Speaker 1: that's around five thousand, five hundred kilometers. It still stands
Speaker 1: today and is the longest fence in the world. The
Speaker 1: population of pure dingoes has declined as many have bred
Speaker 1: with feral dogs, domestic dogs, and hybrids, though the definitions
Speaker 1: among those are sometimes contested. One place where pure dingoes
Speaker 1: can still be found is on Queensland's Fraser Island, though
Speaker 1: they're very predatory there, which has led to tragic incidents
Speaker 1: with humans, which brings us to yes, it is sad
Speaker 1: but true. Dingo has on record eaten a baby. Dingoes
Speaker 1: generally don't attack people, but if they sense fear, they
Speaker 1: are more likely to attack. Here's the story behind this tragedy.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty, the young Chamberlain family went camping near
Speaker 1: Australia's famous Oolaroo also known as Ayer's Rock in the
Speaker 1: Northern Territory. A Lindy Chamberlain, thirty two years old at
Speaker 1: the time, saw a dingo leave their tent and immediately
Speaker 1: went to check inside it. She discovered that their ten
Speaker 1: week old baby, Azaria, who had been sleeping in the tent,
Speaker 1: was gone. A Lindy supposedly cried out to her husband Michael,
Speaker 1: something along the lines of the dingoes got my baby.
Speaker 1: The authorities were called and there was a large but
Speaker 1: unsuccessful attempt to find Azaria. Many people heard about this
Speaker 1: disturbing and horrific event and it stayed with them because
Speaker 1: it's not every day that you hear about this kind
Speaker 1: of animal attack. The incident was a big deal at
Speaker 1: that time. Most people didn't think a dingo could or
Speaker 1: would eat a baby. Authorities suspected Lindy of killing his
Speaker 1: area and then concocting the story about the dingo. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: she was arrested, tried, and found guilty of murder in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty two. Michael was also found guilty of being
Speaker 1: an accessory after the crime. There was widespread media coverage
Speaker 1: of the trial. People even picketed outside the courthouse with
Speaker 1: signs that read the dingo is innocent. Dingoes dominated water
Speaker 1: cooler conversation around the globe. Fast forward to nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 1: both Lyndy and Michael's convictions were overturned when the police
Speaker 1: discovered a baby's jacket near an area full of dingo layers.
Speaker 1: It was as Areas. On September fifteenth of nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 1: the Northern Territory Court of Criminal Appeals unanimously quashed all
Speaker 1: convictions against Lindy and Michael Chamberlain. That same year, a
Speaker 1: movie known as Evil Angels in Australia and New Zealand
Speaker 1: and as a Cry in the Dark elsewhere, portrayed the
Speaker 1: tragic events of the case. The Meryl Streep and Sam
Speaker 1: Neil starred as the Chamberlain's Finally, in twenty twelve, after
Speaker 1: thirty two years, the coroner officially changed as Area's cause
Speaker 1: of death to quote as the result of being taken
Speaker 1: by a dingo. After the new ruler, Lindy addressed the court,
Speaker 1: she said, obviously we are relieved and delighted to come
Speaker 1: to the end of this saga. No longer will Australia
Speaker 1: be able to say dingoes are not dangerous and only
Speaker 1: attack if provoked. Two years later, Lindy was awarded one
Speaker 1: point three million dollars for wrongful imprisonment the dingo had
Speaker 1: taken her baby. Since the incident in nineteen eighty there
Speaker 1: have been several more documented cases of dingo's attacking and
Speaker 1: killing children, but the phrase truly entered pop culture due
Speaker 1: to a couple other things. What Meryl Streep gave an
Speaker 1: impassioned rendition of the line in that nineteen eighty eight film,
Speaker 1: and then in nineteen ninety one, an episode of the
Speaker 1: sitcom Seinfeld parodied it. In the episode, Elaine is annoyed
Speaker 1: by a woman at a party who repeatedly and obnoxiously
Speaker 1: says that she cannot find her fiance, whom she calls baby.
Speaker 1: Elaine eventually leans toward the woman and, very clearly in
Speaker 1: her best worst desay reliant accent, says, might be a
Speaker 1: dango at you, baby, Sorry about that. The iterations of
Speaker 1: the line later popped up in everything from The Simpsons
Speaker 1: to Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Tropic Thunder, encasing it
Speaker 1: in popular culture with very little reference to the original story.
Speaker 1: Today's episode is based on the article our Dingo's Dangerous
Speaker 1: and did One Really Eat a Baby? On HowStuffWorks dot com,
Speaker 1: written by Megs Barwick. The brain Stuff is production by
Speaker 1: Heart Radio in partnership with how Stuffworks dot Com, and
Speaker 1: it's produced by Tyler klang A. Four more podcasts from
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