Most versatile vocal ability for a dog

The member of the dog family (Canidae) with the most versatile vocal ability is the New Guinea singing dog (Canis familiaris hallstromi). Revealed in 2020 by DNA comparisons to be descended from Indonesian New Guinea's extremely rare highland wild dog, the singing dog does not normally bark. Instead, it is well known for, and duly named after, its uniquely diverse range of yodel-like vocal sounds, produced not only individually but also as a chorus featuring several individuals vocalizing together but each at a different pitch with its own unique voice. No other dogs do this. Their howling sounds resemble yodeling because their tones go up and down, and, remarkably, sonograms of these harmonic sounds resemble the haunting vocalizations famously produced by the humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae). Their most distinctive vocalization, unique to singing dogs, is their so-called trill, named after its bird-like auditory character, which is a high-frequency, pulsed signal that can last as long as 80 milliseconds (0.08 second) and is characterized by an evenly timed series of 10 to several dozen short (5 to 20-millisecond) bursts at an average fundamental frequency of 1,500 Hz.

Singing dogs are bred in captivity as domestic pets and also rare zoo exhibits, and since the 1970s it was popularly believed among scientists that what is now known to be their wild ancestor, the highland wild dog, native to western New Guinea's upper mountainous regions, was extinct, with only a few unconfirmed sightings on record. In 2020, however, news emerged that in 2016 a pack of 15 highland wild dogs was observed and studied in a remote region of Papua by a team of researchers from the New Guinea Highland Wild Dog Foundation (NGHWDF), who returned two years later to take blood samples from three of these dogs and collect scat samples. It was those samples that subsequently provided confirmation that the highland wild dog was the ancestor of the singing dog.