The United Kingdom’s last New Guinea singing dog has died at the age of 15 at Exmoor Zoo, the BBC reports.
The dog, named Kota, died in mid-March at Exmoor Zoological Park, according to the charity.
Kota had been receiving palliative care for two months after his partner Bella died four weeks earlier.
Bringing New Dogs to the Zoo?
“It is with great sadness we announce the death of Kota, our last New Guinea singing dog… Both Belle and Kota have been phenomenal ambassadors for the zoo and have had a huge following and will leave a large hole in many hearts,” said a spokesperson for the zoo.
They didn’t confirm whether the dogs would be replaced. But, they did say that the zoo was “trying to maintain a UK presence for this vitally important ancestral dog”.
The zoo was in talks with the New Guinea Singing Dog Conservation Society in the United States, but there are only six breeding females there currently, with no litters expected until the summer.
The History of the Singing Dog
The New Guinea singing dogs are the original ancestor of all domestic dogs in the region. And, they get their name from their howl. It’s sometimes compared to a yodel or the song of a humpback whale.
Their natural habitat is the mountains of New Guinea in Oceania. They’ve been able to adapt to their environment over 20,000 years with minimal human contact.
At one stage, they were thought to be a separate species. However, they’re closely related to dingoes in Australia.
Some tribes on the island have variously kept wild dogs as hunting aids or playmates for children. Some even tried to catch them for food. Per CNN, they were at one point thought to be extinct in the wild, but in 2016 15 were found on the west of New Guinea, in the Indonesian province of Papua.
