Following a recent wave of vicious assaults, Australian officials fined two visitors who took selfies with dingoes more than $1,500 each for making the “extremely dangerous decision” to connect with the local wild dogs.
The two women were fortunate not to have been attacked in the separate events on the well-liked tourist island of K’gari, formerly known as Fraser Island, according to a statement released on Friday by Queensland Department of Environment and Science compliance manager Mike Devery.
A 29-year-old unidentified New South Wales lady was pictured resting near to a group of sleeping dingo puppies in a department photo. She was fortunate that the pups’ mother wasn’t close by, according to Devery.
The other tourist, a 25-year-old Queensland woman, appeared in a selfie video posted to social media that showed her with a growling dingo, “which was clearly exhibiting dominance-testing behaviour,” he said.
“It is not playful behaviour. Wongari are wild animals and need to be treated as such, and the woman is lucky the situation did not escalate,” he added, referring to dingoes by their indigenous name.
In an update Friday, the department said a 23-year-old woman was hospitalized with serious injuries to her arms and legs after she was bitten by dingoes while jogging on an island beach Monday.
Tourists Shane and Sarah Moffat jumped in to rescue her, CNN affiliate Nine News reported.
“There was a big piece missing out of her arm there and there was puncture wounds all up the side of her legs,” Shane Moffat told Nine News.
The leader of that dingo pack was later euthanized, the department said. It had also been involved in recent biting incidents that led to the hospitalization of a 6-year-old girl, the department said.
“It was also clear from its behaviour that it had become habituated, either by being fed or from people interacting with it for videos and selfies,” the update said.
“Our number one priority is to keep people on K’gari safe and conserve the population of wongari (dingoes), and those who blatantly ignore the rules for social media attention can expect a fine or a court appearance,” Devery said.