Dingo
d dingo 
| |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 5 |
| Attacks |
Bite 1d6 |
| Base level | 4 |
| Base experience | 44 |
| Speed | 16 |
| Base AC | 5 |
| Base MR | 0 |
| Alignment | 0 (neutral) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | 1 (Very rare) |
| Genocidable | Yes |
| Weight | 400 |
| Nutritional value | 200 |
| Size | Medium |
| Resistances | None |
| Resistances conveyed | None |
|
A dingo:
| |
| Reference | monst.c#line247 |
A dingo, d, is a type of monster that appears in NetHack. It is a medium-sized carnivorous canine that can be seen via infravision and is almost identical to a dog - unlike dogs, dingoes are not domestic, and their corpses and tins are safe to eat.
A dingo has a single bite attack.
Generation
Randomly generated dingoes are always created hostile.
Dingoes appear among the random d that are part of the first quest monster class for Samurai and make up 24⁄175 of the monsters randomly generated on the Samurai quest.
Strategy
The dingo is relatively easy to defeat for the point it is encountered: most characters that do not start with enough proficiency in their weapon of choice will ideally attain it by the time they start encountering dingoes, and can have a pet or use other items to tip the fight in their favor if need be. Despite being heavier and stronger than jackals and coyotes, dingo corpses provide slightly less nutrition (200 for dingoes vs. 250 for jackals and coyotes).
History
The dingo first appears in NetHack-- 3.0.10 and NetHack-- 3.1.3, and makes its vanilla debut in NetHack 3.3.0.
Origin
The dingo is an ancient lineage of dog found in Australia, with the oldest remains of dingoes in Australia dated around 3,500 years old; genes show that the dingo reached Australia more than 8,300 years ago, and the lineage can be traced back through Maritime Southeast Asia to the mainland Asian continent. Its taxonomic classification is currently debated: it is variously considered a form of domestic dog not warranting recognition as a subspecies, a subspecies of dog or wolf, or a full species in its own right. It may either be included in the species Canis familiaris or considered one of the following independent taxa: Canis familiaris dingo, Canis dingo, or Canis lupus dingo.
The dingo is a medium-sized canine that possesses a lean, hardy body adapted for speed, agility, and stamina, and the skull is wedge-shaped and appears large in proportion to the body. Its three main coat colourations are light ginger or tan, black and tan, or creamy white. Dingoes are carnivores that often hunt in packs, and prey on kangaroos, wallabies, wallaroos, rabbits, rodents, lizards, sheep, calves, poultry and carrion; they are believed to have hunted several animal species to extinction including some species of bandicoots and rat kangaroos.
A dingo pack usually consists of a mated pair, their offspring (or "cubs") from the current year, and sometimes offspring from the previous year. Dingoes live in packs of between 3 and 12, but they can be seen alone as well; the leaders are the alpha male and the alpha female and are usually the only pair to breed. The adult females usually give birth to 4-5 cubs in a litter, and feed their young by regurgitating food. Dingo cubs become independent of their mother after four to eight months of age.
While some people keep dingoes as pets, they are regarded as a pest by farmers: some early European settlers of Australia looked on dingoes as domestic dogs, while others thought them more like wolves; as dingoes began to attack sheep over the years, they were soon regarded as devious and cowardly pests, and were associated with thieves, vagabonds and bushrangers. The informal use of "dingo" to refer to someone as cowardly, dishonest and treacherous originated as a form of political attack in the 1960s. For indigenous Australians, the dingo plays a prominent role in Dreamtime stories, but it is rarely depicted in their cave paintings.
Variants
SLASH'EM
In SLASH'EM, dingoes are given three multiple stages of growth similar to dogs with the introduction of the dingo puppy and large dingo: a dingo puppy can grow up into a dingo, and a dingo can grow up into a large dingo - the dingo is the only stage that can be randomly generated in Gehennom.
Dingoes appear among the random d that are part of the second quest monster class for Yeomen and make up 6⁄175 of the monsters randomly generated on the Yeoman quest.
All of the above information also applies to SlashTHEM and Hack'EM.
Encyclopedia entry
A wolflike wild dog, Canis dingo, of Australia, having a reddish- or yellowish-brown coat, believed to have been introduced by the aborigines.
