Scientists believe the genetic makeup of pure-bred dingoes prevents them from attacking farm animals.
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This was one controversial finding from yet another scientific study on the controversial animal.
Academics have been trying for years to unravel the identity of the native animal blamed for costing Australian agriculture more than $100 million annually.
Now we have at least the third published study on dingoes in the past two years.
This latest research claims to have "cracked" the genetic code, according to senior author, Professor Bill Ballard from La Trobe University.
The role of dingoes has been debated for years - with many scientists believing they are genetically the same as feral wild dogs.
Recent science using DNA testing says they are not.
The distinction between a wild dog and dingo is legally important as dingoes are "protected" across many states and territories.
Prof. Ballard said a full genetic sequence of a wild-born, pure Australian Desert Dingo called Sandy Maliki - revealed pure dingoes are an "intermediary" between wolves and domestic dog breeds.
"If we're correct, what farmers currently assume are dingoes killing their stock, are likely to be feral wild dogs," Prof. Ballard said.
A study last year from UNSW examined 5000 genetic samples from wild dogs and found 99 per cent of the animals were either pure or mostly dingo.
Even more recently, a DNA examination of "wild dogs" killed in rural Queensland in the name of pest control were found to be pure dingo, not wild dog hybrids.
Dr Kylie Cairns said the results for the dogs' DNA samples were a 99.99 per cent dingo match.
Dr Cairns was the lead author of that UNSW research published last year.
"The terminology wild dog is problematic because it implies that the animals are feral or invasive, however whilst dingoes may be an agricultural pest they are still a native animal," Dr Cairns said.
Associate Professor Matt Field from JCU's Centre for Tropical Bioinformatics and Molecular Biology co-led the most recent study which compared the dingo genome to that of five domestic dogs, and he said the results highlighted the importance of preserving a pure dingo baseline.
Because breed dogs have evolved much more recently, they've developed diseases that are particular to certain breeds, such as hip dysplaysia and blindness.
"Wolves and dingo genomes have disease-free baselines so ideally they could help figure out what was causing the problem, to treat it at the root cause," he said. "That's one of the exciting applications of this work."
Dr Field said culling dingoes meant that resource was being lost, which called into question the wisdom of doing that.
"It's a complex issue - there's something to be said for finding a way to preserve the pure Australian dingo," he said.
As far as he was aware, there was no comprehensive understanding of how many pure dingoes were left in Australia.
"A lot of genome testing on dingoes still has to be done to understand what impact cross-breeding will have," he said.
Wild dogs may be fair game for baiting, shooting and trapping programs run by landholders and governments, dingoes are often not.
Some of this research has confused landholders and governments who collectively spend many millions of dollars on trapping, baiting and fences to keep wild dogs out of farming areas.
Prof. Ballard from La Trobe University said one of the key differences between dingoes and dogs is the number of copies of the pancreatic "amylase" gene each has.
"A pure dingo has only one copy of the amylase gene, whereas domestic dogs have multiple copies - which we show influences the gut microbiome and, we predict, affects what dingoes eat," Professor Ballard.
"Based on this new knowledge, we hypothesise that dingoes are far less likely to eat farm animals, including sheep."
The pure dingo which was part of the study was discovered as a three-week old pup by a central Australian roadside near the Strzelecki Track, with her sister and brother.
Scientists lined up Sandy's genome against a Greenland Wolf, and five domestic dog breeds including the German Shepherd, and the world's oldest known dog breed, the African Basenji.
The five-year study was undertaken by a research consortium comprising experts in microbiology, computational biology and veterinary science, from 10 institutions across six countries - including Australia, Denmark, Norway, Germany, USA and England.
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