Highlights: In a bizarre turn of events last month, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced that he would ban American XL bullies, a type of pit bull-shaped dog that had recently been implicated in a number of violent and sometimes deadly attacks.
XL bullies are perceived to be dangerous — but is that really rooted in reality?
Pitbulls are responsible for more human attacks than any other breed.
https://www.aaha.org/publications/newstat/articles/2019-06/new-study-identifies-most-damaging-dog-bites-by-breed/
Yeah frankly the statistics are pretty conclusive. You can argue about bad owners all you’d like, and theres probably at least some truth there (if you’re an asshole who wants a violent dog, you’re of course going to choose a breed with a reputation for violence), but it’s clear to any unbiased observer that pit bulls have a high tendency towards violence.
No one is advocating that we round up all the pit bulls and euthenize them (no sane person anyways), but that we stop breeding new ones. Frankly there needs to be a lot more regulation on dog breeding, besides violent breeds, there’s no reason we should be breeding more (as an example) pugs, who are doomed to spend their whole lives suffocating just because some people like their squashed faces
I’m not trying to nitpick and start an argument with you but the guy you’re replying to has conflated two very different things. Likelihood to bite and ability to damage with bite. You are most likely to be bitten by a Labrador retriever. You are most likely to be fucked up by a Pitbull. I will not deny that pit bulls have the ability to fuck you up. Just like I won’t deny the ability of a German Shepherd to rip a fist-sized chunk out of your leg.
Furthermore he is pretending to quote with a sense of authority however reading his own linked article will disprove his claim. The number one identified breed with the ability to cause damage was “unidentified”. The article claims the number two breed was “Pit Bull” which is not a singular breed and encompasses many subreads. The third was “mixed” fourth was German Shepherd.
I have owned many pits over the years. We currently own one that is 25 percent husky and 75 percent pitt that looks nothing like a pit he came out looking like a hound everybody loves him always asked to come up and pet. At the same time they are afraid and scared of our smaller mutt dog with a blocky head and call it a pit, but he’s just a mix of retrekver shepherd and terrier.
I do alot of work and give a fair amount of donations to a animal rescue facility that fits thru about 400 dogs per year. Pit bulls have without question been the most likely to be aggressive out of all the dogs that file thru. We get many other aggressive dogs but the pits are the only ones that stand out.
This may be due to their strength or due to the above average likelihood of them being raised in aggressive environments. There are also nice pits but regardless I am completely against breeding them and more so, there is no logical argument to be made breed them.
I wonder if it could be do to unconscious racial bias? I’m aware of research that shows people disproportionately associate pitbull ownership with black culture, and of research that shows white and black toddlers each view black toddlers as inferior.
There’s definitely a selection bias: you work at a place that handles neglected, abused, or unwanted dogs, and bully dogs are very popular. The selection of dogs you see doesn’t include those that already live in forever homes, where they will die of old age without ever being anything but a loyal and trusted family member. Also, I bet that if you tested the DNA of 50 dogs you visually identified as being pitbulls, maybe half of them are not actually pitbulls.
I find this rhetoric extremely dangerous. This is what eugenicists say. It’s what the most delusional racists say.
I didn’t read the article the commenter linked, just OPs link, and it’s the same thing that happens with many different “let’s ban this arguments.” People get swept up and hyped on common sentiment fear, and find any “article” that supports their viewpoint, because their opinion is now a popular opinion, therefore they’re right.
I do think that there are some breeds where caution is needed, but much of that ties back into people having certain breeds that aren’t right for them. Pits are high energy dogs that require a lot of exercise, and when they don’t get that exercise, they do dumb shit. Similarly, a 125 pound person probably shouldn’t be walking a 100 pound dog of any breed, as an owner needs to be able to control their animal if something happens.
I have a Staffador (Staffordshire mixed with chocolate lab). She is extremely high energy, can jump a good 4’ in the air, and loves to play bite/wrestle. It’s been a long road getting her jumping and aggressive behavior under control, but you’re more likely to get properly bit by our plotthound with PTSD.
From the article:
“Mixed breeds” are just barely behind pit bulls. That’s hardly conclusive.
“mixed breeds” just means any dog that isn’t purebred, which is the vast majority of dogs, so it doesn’t say much that they account for a lot of attacks
Great, so why isn’t there a huge outcry about mixed breed dogs? I mean, oh my god, they’re essentially as dangerous as pit bulls.
Because “mixed breed” dogs aren’t a breed? That’s my whole point.
What you’re arguing is basically equivalent to this “psychopaths account for 26% of murderers, closely followed by people with brown eyes at 25%, why aren’t we doing anything about the brown eyed menace!”
Lumping all mixed breed dogs just inflates the numbers, because - again - the vast majority of dogs are mixed breed.
Put another way, because I can tell you’re having a hard time grasping this - mixed breed dogs account for 53% of all dogs in the US according to the AKC. Pit bulls account for just a hair under 6% (5.8, if you want the specifics). That means according to the stats in the article, any given pit bull is 10x more likely to bite than any given mixed breed dog.
Get it?
“Pit bull” isn’t a breed either.
American Pit Bull Terrier is a breed. It’s one of several collective breeds that people typically refer to when they use pit bull. The others being American Staffordshire Terrier, American Bully, Staffordshire Bull Terrier and sometimes the American Bulldog.
That term is also often used for mixed dogs that may have some amount of one of those breeds or that shares physical characteristics with one of those breeds, usually head and/or body shape.
Anecdotally, I have a neighbor whose neighbor on the other side called the police on him for having a “dangerous breed” dog. They told the police he had a pit bull. It was a boxer.
That’s a fair point, but “pit bull” being comprised of several sub-breeds isn’t even kind of the same sort of umbrella as “literally every dog that isn’t a pure bred”
And your neighbor being an idiot really doesn’t have any relevance on the discussion
They are not sub-breeds, they are breeds, and I never said it was the same. I simply pointed out that pit bull is not itself a breed. It would be closer to a classification than a breed.
Comparing and banning mixed breed dogs makes as much sense as comparing and banning pit bulls if you don’t actually define what breeds are intended by using “pit bull”. That’s why many statutes in the US specify breeds in the legislation.
Language is important, especially when you’re talking about legislation used to restrict or ban something. Particularly if your primary determinant is visual appearance since, unless the animal is a registered purebred or DNA tested, you’re relying on what the dog looks like.
I used my neighbors situation as an example of how “pit bull” is not a proper identifier by itself.
“Reported” is the key term. In over half of all dog injuries, the breed is not reported.
The statistics aren’t conclusive at all.
In over half of dog related injuries the breed is not reporter.
Add to that, even vet staff cannot visually identify dog breed with any level of accuracy.
And when you talk about banning dog breeds, yes you are talking about rounding them up in euthanizing them. Period.
I’m absolutely not. I’m advocating restrictions on breeders, not owners. No one should have their dog taken away, and pit bulls in shelters should still be adoptable in my view. I just don’t believe we should be deliberately breeding more dogs with known issues, whether it’s issues with their own health (like pugs) or issues with aggression.
Please don’t presume to tell me what I’m advocating.
You are though.
You realize dogs have all the equipment to breed without any human interaction right?
So pitbulls will still breed even if you tell people not to do it.
How do you come up with pitbulls having health and aggression issues? In over half of all dog bite cases, the breed is unknown. It’s not anyone’s job to count dog bites by breed, so anyone purporting to have done so is basically lying.
I’m not, reread my previous comment. Last time I’m going to say this before I just block you without giving you the courtesy of even replying, stop deciding for me what I’m advocating, I’ve laid out the strategy I’d like to see in my previous comment, I’m advocating for absolutely no action beyond that.
Yes, of course - do you actually believe this is where a majority of pitbulls come from though? No moral strategy will completely eliminate the breed, but restricting breeders will mean that your average person can’t get one, which means your average Joe/Jane is far less likely to run into them on the street.
I never said they have health issues (maybe they do, I’m not aware of it though) - When I talk about breeds with health issues, I’m referring to breeds like Pugs that live their whole lives in discomfort because of how much we fucked up their physiology.
True, that’s why we only look at the cases where the breed is known for these discussions, without making any assumptions about the dogs whose breed is unknown.
I guess true? In that people don’t get paid, they do however report breed information as part of the reporting of the dog bite. And as I’ve said in other comments in this thread, I’m entirely sure that there is a margin of error in the reporting of breeds for dog bites. However, even if you assume as much as a 5x overreporting for pitbulls, that still puts at about double the chance of an individual pitbull biting someone as opposed to a mixed breed dog.
Ah, the ole “I don’t like it, so it must be made up”, very scientific.
They don’t report the breed in over half of all dog bite cases. You’re kidding yourself that the resultant data isn’t worthless. Statistically, there could be another breed of dog you’ve never heard of causing over half of dog related njuries.
You’re response is:
Well you may not but “we” do, and we know relying on something that is so underreported, as well as misreported, is not rational. Seems like you realize the data is worthless but you want to ban pitbulls so badly you don’t care. That makes me think that for you it’s about something more than public safety.
Yeah, it’s been clear from your very first comment that you feel this way lol - you’re welcome to disagree with me, but I’ve already laid out my thoughts on the matter multiple times. Unless you have anything new to add, instead of just repeating the same fallacies about the data being “worthless”, then I don’t see any value in continuing to talk in circles
A pitbull isn’t even a breed of dog. Grouping them all together as a breed is like grouping together all dogs considered hounds. It’s an umbrella term for the American pit bull terrier, American Staffordshire terrier, American bulldog, Boston terrier, Boxer, Bull terrier, Bullmastiff, English bulldog, French bulldog, and Staffordshire bull terrier.
So essentially statistics on pitbull bites are either completely flawed, or just flat out wrong.
Vox did a very nice piece on pitbull stigma that changed my mind about them.
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They’re all intentionally flawed because the people that spew this horseshit always conveniently leave out per capita statistics and the fact that pit bull breeds, as far as they’re typically defined with APBT’s and Staffordshire terriers, are far more populous than any other breed.
When you actually look at the numbers per capita bullies are not even as “dangerous” as things like German shephers, rottweilers, dobermans, or several other breeds nobody wants to ban.
70% of fatal bites are by pitbulls, but no where near 70% of dogs are pitbulls. Pits are roughly 6% of dogs.
Ooh look, you’re partway there.
Now do some more reading on how many dogs that is, what percentage of the population other breeds account for, and what percentage of pit bulls are responsible for fatal injuries vs what percentage of other breeds are responsible for fatal injuries.
And then, to actually make it even, separate the pit bull breeds into their individual actual breeds. You did know there were several breeds considered pit bulls, right?
https://www.pitbullinfo.org/inaccurate-pit-bull-statistics.html
What you find is that PER CAPITA pit bull breeds are not significant outliers when it comes to fatal injuries or attacks. They are similar to other breeds that nobody gives a shit about like rottweilers, dobermans, German shepherds, and other common breeds you can find anywhere that pit bull haters live.
“
Black peoplePit bulls are only X% of dogs but account for Y% ofcrimefatal injuries!”Stop me if you’ve heard that one. It tends to come from the same type of person.
Don’t bring racism into this, this has nothing to do with racism or people.
And yes, per capita pitbulls do account for far more fatal attacks compared to other breeds.
And my goodness, you’re actually linking to pitbullinfo, hahahaha. I already did a full teardown of that idiotic site, and its inability to actually read scientific papers with another lemmier. It’s such a massive crap pile of propaganda, trying to disguise itself as a reliable source.
Every paper they list in their sources either doesn’t say what they claim it does, or says literally the exact opposite. It’s hilarious how bad that site is, and I can’t believe anyone falls for it.
Breed specific bans are about racism.
I recall one advocate I think from New Jersey who said the quiet part out loud about banning pitbulls: “we just don’t want these kind of people around here.”
Hmmm.
All the pitbulls I know are owned by white people. I still want that shit breed banned.
It’s not about race, pitbulls are shit dogs and should no longer be bred.
You seem like a shit person to be totally honest. Pretty much everyone I know did a book report on this subject in the 5th grade and realize how fucking dumb breed restrictions were. I guess you were sick that day.
That is simply not true. More injuries are attributed to “pit bull type” breeds but that is far different from “more human attacks.” It’s also wildly tainted since it’s based on self reporting and any time it’s not an obvious German shepherd, husky or golden (etc) if someone can’t quite guess what it is most people are predisposed to assuming pit bull because of bigots like you that just hate the breed.
Small dogs like chihuahuas are far more likely to attack humans than pit bulls, although serious injury is less likely for smaller breeds. Even that is skewed based on human factors and handling since small dogs like chihuahuas are often carted around and over handled with complete disregard for their comfort or tolerance level because they’re “pocket sized” and too many assholes have no problem just picking them up whether they want it or not.
The only thing your link shows is that the majority of unknown large dogs that caused injuries were assumed to be pit bulls by one person or another.
FTA:
That describes about half of all dogs, so no fucking shit.
Yeah, it’s clear that these people that use dog bite statistics to argue for breed bans are not doing so in good faith. The breed is unknown is over half of all dog bite cases. That is the beginning and end of this discussion. It’s all that needs to be said.
The entire premise of these ban advocates is based on counting something that simply cannot be counted.
I suspect it is really just a ruse to push sympathy for eugenics and right-wing pseudo science about genetics.
So if a dog is 10% pit bull, 20% German shepherd, 10% beagle 15% husky, 20% lab, 5% golden and 10% Belgian Malinois it counts towards “pit bulls” but no other breed? Got it. It’s almost like another form of historical discrimination by race said any percentage counts as belonging to the undesired race that is being targeted…
“Of unidentifiable dogs that have average dog characteristics we attributed generic criteria that meet any number of breeds but also fit the specific ones we wanted to target with our predetermined conclusion prior to executing this study. We were able to validate our desired outcome with this specific targeting.” #Science!
The fuck?
Not what the article actually said.
They’re actually right. Pitbull describes a certain shape of dog not an actual breed. If a dog is mixed breed or a completely different breed of dog but looks like we think of as a pitbull it labeled as such
“Any dog that we think might have some pitbull is listed as a pitbull.” That’s plain English for what the study says. No other breeds are singled out where any suspected percentage adds to only their tally for overall rate of attacks. Yes, common dog breeds are obviously statistically represented in the majority of average cases. The only thing unique about pitbulls is how far people go out of their way to prescribe blame solely on them. Every dog that meets their size and measurement categories almost certainly contains multiple other breeds, yet they are only counting pitbulls. If there was any academic integrity or scientific process, counting an assumed percentage as a tally for one breed means any other assumed breeds should increase their tallies as well; otherwise it’s just bad science which is par for the course on breed hating “studies.”
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Mixed breed is a separate category from pit. Your example dog would be under mixed breed.
And they deliberately set broad and abusable categories of “unknown” to try and single out pits based on weight and “wide heads.” The bottom line is that when a dog bits and it isn’t an obvious breed, due to decades of misplaced canine bigotry everyone just assumes it’s a pit or pit mix. Pitbulls are no more aggressive (and in most studies slightly less aggressive) than any other breed. They also are no more capable of causing injury than any other equivalent sized dog. There are exactly two factors that lead to the current stigma around them; bad owners who deliberately make them violent and ignorant people that mislabel any dog they are afraid of as a “pit mix.” If any other breed was categorized the same way where any wild-assed guess that it might be “part x-breed” counts as an “X-breed attack” then it would easily top the lists the exact same way.
Not true. Pitbulls do not give up attacking as easily as other breeds. What makes pits so dangerous is that once they do decide to attack something there is very little you can do to stop them. I’ve watched video of a pit trying to attack a horse, and even after being repeatedly kicked in the had, the stupid dog just kept attacking until the horse killed it.
This is a trait that has been bred into pitbulls since they have been bred to fight other dogs. Other dog breeds are smart enough to give up on an attack.
If you add up literally every other dog breed in the list of fatal dog attacks it doesn’t even come close to the number of kills by pitbulls. Combine together rotweillers, german shepherds, malinose, huskies, chow-chows, mastiffs, etc… and pits still kill more people than all of those together. And that’s not including pits killing other dogs, which is a frequent occurrence.
This is just purely false. It is literally anecdotal from people that hate pitbulls. The primary trait that benefits them in fighting is loyalty to owners where they will do things they don’t want to, such as fight and injure other living things, to please their owners. Out of the 51 dogs recovered from Michael Vick’s dogfighting operation, 49 were successfully rehabilitated and only one was euthanized due to behavior. What you are saying is literally wrong and made up.
“Pitbulls” are actually somewhat rare. Dogs with some pitbull in them are what are common, but they also have a bit of every other breed. It is literally observation bias mixed with selective exclusion. It’s literally a broad and generic term used to classify any number of mixed breed mutts without attributing the downsides to any other breed that is present. If you apply a single label to a broad and undefined mixture and then exclude every other component of that mixture it is super easy to say that the thing you labeled is the majority; it’s the most basic form of garbage “science.”
I’m glad you took time to take a nuanced opinion on the article that you don’t seem to have read. To be honest it sounds like you didn’t read your own article. "unknown” tops the list. This is because dog breeds aren’t identified by genetics a cop shows up says oh it looked like a pitbull it had a blocky head and it’s automatically a pit until DNA tests prove otherwise.
I read the article. It’s the same old excuses about “It’s the owner not the breed.” And “Breed is not a reliable predictor of aggressive behavior in dogs.”
Those statements just aren’t true. Dogs are specifically bred for certain physical and behavioral traits.
There was also a study done that proved breeding aggressive animal lines made their progeny even more aggressive. And docile more docile.
https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/whos-a-good-fox-soviet-experiment-reveals-genetic-roots-of-behavior
This post is idiotic. It’s written by someone incapable of nuance or critical thinking.
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https://atts.org/breed-statistics/statistics-page1/
From an organization that does temperament tests.
This is the percentage of tested animals that pass their temperament tests.
AMERICAN PIT BULL TERRIER - 87.6%
AMERICAN STAFFORDSHIRE TERRIER - 85.7%
OH NOES! 15% don’t pass! How horrific are these beasts?
AUSTRALIAN CATTLE DOG - 80.2%
AUSTRALIAN SHEPHERD - 82.5%
CHOW CHOW - 71.7%
COCKER SPANIEL - 82.4%
DOBERMAN PINSCHER - 80.1%
GERMAN SHEPHERD DOG - 85.7%
GOLDEN RETRIEVER - 85.9%
GREAT DANE - 82.7%
MIXED BREED - 86.6%
ROTTWEILER - 85.0%
WEIMARANER - 80.8%
This is a selection of fairly common dogs and the Weimaraner because I did NOT expect to see that kind of failure rate from those guys. Every one of them I’ve met has been incredibly patient. I include the chow chow to show an extreme outlier. That’s the lowest score I found with around a hundred or more animals tested. In that case it was 99, but that’s close enough for comparison.
So what does this show? Clearly, Aussie dogs all need to be destroyed. They’re far more temperamental and dangerous than pit bulls. Chow chow? Burn them in cleansing fire.
Incidentally, I included the cocker spaniel because that narrative of them being more dangerous than pit bulls follows my personal biases from my own anecdotal experiences. I’ve been bitten by three dogs, all cocker spaniels, all injured me to some extent. But nobody reports the cocker spaniel bite, no matter how bloody it is. You just clean it up and get on with your life because you got bit by a cocker spaniel you fucking pussy. On the other hand, I’ve been aggressively run at by numerous pit bulls and have thus far escaped with only considerable amounts of drool on me after a seriously violent request for pets ended in a belly rub massacre.
Anecdote, however, is not the singular form of data.
Temperament does not equate to ability and preponderance to cause severe injury or death.
That’s literally what it fucking is.
https://atts.org/about-temperament/
“the sum total of all inborn and acquired physical and mental traits and talents which determines, forms and regulates behavior in the environment”
And again, if you’re ACTUALLY worried about severe injury or death then you’ll be focused on significantly more dangerous breeds such as chows and shar-peis. But you’re likely not and just want to say “PIT BULL BAD” because you don’t understand how statistics work.
Also, no your link does not say temperament is propensity to attack. A dog can fail the temperament test because it is shy or nervous, as per your own link.
Both of which are indicators that a dog may be fearful and prone to attack if it feels threatened. If you know nothing about dog behavior, why are you here?
You are really stretching the words may be a lot here. Most fearful dogs are more likely to run away, and will only attack if cornered with no other way out. Seems you’re the one who doesn’t know about dog behavior, would explain why your a pitbull apologist.
Let’s see, 1 person has been killed by a Chow-chow, and none by shar-peis in recent years, yet dozens killed by Pits. Yes, I see how chows and shar-peis are what I should be worried about:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_dog_attacks
Okay, now learn to divide.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7236a6.htm
CDC, the people that actually track this shit, states 468 deaths from dog attacks in the US between 2011-2021.
So about 45 on average per year. The exact number is about to be irrelevant.
You want to lump all pit bull breeds together? Okay, let’s say they’re responsible for that TERRIFYING 70% of all attacks you pulled out of your ass elsewhere.
70% of 468 is 327.6. OMG SO DANGEROUS! Until you learn to fucking divide.
https://humanesocietytampa.org/pit-bulls-are-2023s-1-breed-in-the-united-states/
“In 2023, pit bulls are the number one breed in the United States, and it is estimated that there are about 18 million pit bulls across the country.”
327.6 divided by 18,000,000 means that you have a 0.0000182 chance of a given pit bull being responsible for a fatal attack.
And that’s if you’re a disingenuous twat and smash all pit bull breeds together, which you would absolutely never do for all breeds with “shepherd” or “retriever” in their name.
There is literally no reason for anyone to fear any dog that is properly trained and not raised by shitheads, and every reason to fear ANY dog that is not.
It’s not by coincidence that the only dogs that have ever bitten me were all cocker spaniels. They’re almost universally owned by people that see them as cute and fluffy lap dogs despite them being considerable size and ill tempered when not trained properly. Do I like them? No. Would I ever want to ban them? Also no, because I’m not a fucking idiot.
Pitbulls dominate the list of fatal dog attacks:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_dog_attacks
And yet they only account for about 6% of owned dogs. They are more dangerous than other breeds, vastly more so in fact. And just because dogs only kill a few dozen people each year, there is no reason not to eliminate the majority of that source of deaths.
And I’ve had friends attacked by “well-trained” and friendly pitbulls. Really nice neck scars they got from that super duper lovely little pibble. Don’t know anyone injured by any other breed.
And how many cocker spaniels have killed people? I;m seeing zero on the list of attacks.
And there it is people Good old American racism.
I’m certain you’ve also followed the Russian experiment where they managed to take wild foxes and domesticate them in under 50 generations and now you can adopt one as a pet. So what you’re telling me is that a dog that has been with humanity for over 10,000 years and then went through a period of roughly 300 years of pit fighting is irrepidly damaged but the fox that went through 15,000 years of being a fox It’s just magically now perfect pet in under 100 years. And you’re telling me that it’s genetics and not nurturing and raising the animal that has an impact okay…
I mean, to my understanding, those domestic foxes, while tame, are still not quite so perfect of pets as animals that have been bred for longer like dogs are. Though there is no reason it can’t be both, while a dog raised to be aggressive will probably be aggressive, and one raised well should be far less likely to be, it’s not fair to say that there is no genetic basis for friendliness and aggression, else there would be no need for domestication in the first place. A lot of selective breeding can be done in century, so the past few centuries of what an animal has been selectively bred for probably matter a bit more than the centuries before that, to a point anyway. I doubt anyone is really arguing that pit bulls are irreparably damaged as a whole either, but if an animal has been bred for aggression for awhile, undoing that is going to require breeding for the reverse, or crossbreeding with another line that does not have that trait and selecting offspring that do not display it, or similar.
I’m not really sure what stance to take on pitbulls and similar breeds myself, I’ve known some people with rather nice ones and it seems to me that any law targeting a specific dog breed is going to be somewhat impractical given that breeds are “fuzzy” categories with ill defined edges, not clear and sharply defined, so determining what animals are close to pitbulls but are not quite, and which are considered to be pitbulls, but barely, is going to be a very difficult line to reliably draw.
Look up the search terms rat poison and pitbulls and get back to me on the fact that people don’t hate them.
I didn’t say anything about people not hating them, clearly many people don’t like them, but that doesn’t really have any bearing on if they’re unreasonably dangerous compared to other breeds or not, since it could be that people think them dangerous because they don’t like them, or it could be that they don’t like them because of them being dangerous.
Sorry, can you clarify what part of OPs post is racism? Genuinely struggling with that connection.
Did you read the original article? It explains the racebaiting that goes on with pit bulls
The idiot I’m replying to believes that The genome of a animal directly correlates to that animals behavior potential for intelligence and general demeanor.
Now where have I heard before that someone’s genetic makeup makes it so that they are not qualified to the same rights and privileges as the others. If this person believes that the parentage of a animal determines how a animal will live and act… That’s eugenics.
Eugenics is the scientifically erroneous and immoral theory of “racial improvement” and “planned breeding,”
To clarify, you are directly equating dog breeds with different races of humans so you can paint op as a eugenics apologist, and win an online argument about dogs? Did I get that right??
I dont see anywhere in the comment saying they’re making direct comparisons to specific human racial segregation. Just making an analogy using human racism as an example.
I can see how someone might misconstrue that if they didn’t like the argument, though.
Breed restrictions are a soft way of telling certain people that they’re not welcome by forcing them to choose between their pet and living in a given location.
It’s redlining via an external factor that isn’t considered discriminatory. Some idiots look at a hard number “2,000 deaths in 30 years, OMG DANGER!” and refuse to accept the fact that per capita there are more dangerous dog breeds out there. But not by much, because the odds of you being killed by a dog are so preposterously low as to be irrelevant to your daily life.
I am merely reading the man statements at face value. Quote" “It’s the owner not the breed.” And “Breed is not a reliable predictor of aggressive behavior in dogs.”
Those statements just aren’t true. Dogs are specifically bred for certain physical and behavioral traits"
If you do not see that as the definition of eugenics then I don’t know what to say in regards to your assessment.
We have been practicing eugenics on animals for literal centuries via selective breeding. We have shaped the designs of many a farm animal this way. Did you think poodles existed in the wild?
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You’re missing the huge difference that humans arent selectively bred for specific physiological and behavioral traits reinforced over many generations. Theres no human race thats 10 times as small as they used to be with bulging eyes and breathing problems.
Oh really?
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-height-by-country
Humans have been selectively breeding ourselves for centuries. Sometimes by choice, sometimes by force, and sometimes by Habsburg. This is largely defined by the beauty standards of a given culture, but there are always more factors.
mmm yeah really, 160cm isnt 1/10th of 184cm.
compared to say, a chihuahua’s 3-6lb average weight up againt an American pit bull terrier average 30-60 lbs. Or 80 lb average North American wolf.
Calling other people idiots and then continuing with the rest of that message is not a good look.
I’m calling red dig an idiot but go on
A lot of domestic animals can go feral, as cats will do as kittens, under one generation. Creating a dog breed requires a lot of intentionality — selective breeding and conformance to some kind of breed standard, like making some specific breed of fox into something that can live in a house.
That’s not what is going on with pit bulls in 2023. Such as they can be defined, they’re usually selected for their capability to protect. And otherwise they’re bred randomly with other breeds and maybe lose that capability, but then they’re not pit bulls anymore. and to be honest nobody really knows what their capabilities are at that point. It’s a total mess, it’s nothing like concentratedly breeding non-aggressive, non-asshole foxes relentlessly until you can tolerate each other indoors.
By the way I heard fox piss is… unsuitable for human co-habitation, is that still a problem?
Cows kill more people than dogs. That does not mean that cows are more aggressive than dogs.
Plenty of dogs referred to as ‘pitbulls’ are not particularly aggressive at all. Often they’re less aggressive than dogs of other breeds. All dogs were bred to be hunting dogs. They all have a prey drive. They can all hunt small animals. Some of the most aggressive dogs, are also the smallest, but a pekingese is less likely to cause serious damage. Being nipped by a pekingese is unlikely to merit a police report. (I say unlikely advisedly. Even small dogs can be dangerous.)
The whole ‘pitbulls are aggressive’ line is a dangerous misconception. Here’s why:
Predictably, someone encounters a pitbull type. They’ve heard all about ‘pitbulls’ being aggressive. But this dog is not even slightly agressive. It is a nice friendly dog. It is especially careful with the children. They go on the internet, and see a video of a child sleeping on a pitbull. The pitbull is incredibly careful with the child.
“People are clearly exagerating how agressive pitbulls are!” “My pitbull is a sweetheart!” “Did you know pitbulls were known as nanny dogs! I read it on the internet.”
But large powerful dogs aren’t dangerous because they’re aggressive. They’re dangerous because they’re large powerful dogs.
The owner leaves a child alone with a large powerful dog. The dog is entirely unagressive. But then firework goes off, the dog panics, the child is in the way. The child tugs the dogs tail, the dog gives what would be a corrective bite for a dog but is far more serious for a child. The dog grabs onto the child’s hand, then doesn’t let go because he thinks it’s a game.
Obviously, it goes without saying that you can train a pitbull type to be aggressive, just like you can train any dog to be aggressive. But gangmembers don’t typically train pekingese dogs to be aggressive just like the police don’t typically use a chihuahua to catch criminals. They want a dog that is dangerous because it is powerful and intimidating. They can train it to be aggressive and bite people if necessary.
As a life long dog owner, who actually knows a bit about them, here’s how you solve the dangerous dog issue:
Banning pitbull types? A short term fix which will result in another breed becoming the next aggressive arsehole fashion accessory.
To a child a fucking dachshund is large and powerful. Leaving children alone with any dog is a parenting issue. I’ve seen my niece and nephew go from 0 to FUCKIN’RUNNIN’ROUNDSWINGIN’SWORDWOOOOOOOOO in .4 of a femtosecond and that shit would scare the fuck out of all but the most passive animals.
Which, of course, is completely natural and has nothing to do with their owners.
I’m not going to say that Pit Bulls aren’t more dangerous than many other breeds… they are. Not just because of breeding, but also because of training and ownership.
But any dog is more dangerous than no dog. Why not just ban dogs altogether? Might as well ban cars and kitchen knives, too, those are pretty dangerous. Hell, I’ve stabbed myself with pencils, too. Better get rid of those as well.
Its not a problem that flat bans will solve. Ban pit bulls and they’ll just start breeding other violent dogs instead. Meanwhile all the mutts with a little bit of pit in them get thrown in an incinerator because people have no concept of nuance or depth. I’m sure you’re more than happy living with that.
They are not.
https://atts.org/breed-statistics/statistics-page1/
It’s better than empty sarcasm.
Edit: Note that they edited their comment after I called them out for it.
You literally did not read the article you posted
For the data to be useful it needs to be normalized.
What’s the rate of bites per number of that breed in the country?
The problem is that breed ownership numbers are only drawn from voluntary club registrations, which isn’t particularly representative and going to be biased against low income owners and rescues.
Did pit bulls bite the most often because they are the most violent, or just because they are very common? Are there environmental factors, such as pit bulls being more commonly a rescue dog and rescue dogs being more likely to bite?
Are there breeds that are much more prone to biting that just aren’t as popular in ownership such that absolute numbers on bites doesn’t reveal them?
The article is 1,000% right that the existing numbers and studies suck and are next to worthless.
Edit: Apparently 84% of fatal bites are from dogs that aren’t spayed or neutered, and 76% are by dogs that aren’t kept as a family pet which are the types of environmental factors that might be quite a bit more relevant than breed, especially given that only 20% of dogs aren’t spayed or neutered and yet represent 84% of fatal bites. Also, glossed over in the link I was responding to is that 82% of the fatal bites are an “Unknown” breed, which is wildly higher than one might have expected.
Edit 2: Additional resources - apparently the data point from the commenter below is from a poor 2000 study that relied on tenuous breed identification and the research world has been trying to correct ever since, with the 2012 study cited above being by one of the same authors of the 2000 study and presenting a very different picture, and more recent research such as:
Pit bulls are estimated to only be about 6% of the dog popualtion, and account for 70% of fatal bites.
By your logic pitbulls would have to be 70% of owned dogs, and let me tell you walking around 7 in 10 dogs are not pitbulls.
First off, you’d need to also factor in the percentage of large dogs, as no matter how vicious a toy breed or even medium sized dog is, it isn’t going to have a high fatal bite count. So out of the 36% of dog households that have a large dog, pitt ownership might be more than 6% of the total.
Then again, we need to look at other factors as well.
Maybe 70% of rescue dogs are pitts and 100% of fatal bites were from rescues? (Or vice versa, that 100% of fatal bites were from rescues and 70% of the rescues that went on to bite were pitts, which is a more subtle but still very different picture of events which might reflect fairly narrow causal environmental factors like prior fight training.)
Without the additional layers of data, the best we can do is draw potentially misleading conclusions around causative factors when we barely have correlative ones.
And the ways in which this could be dangerous in terms of social policy is if actions are taken around the mythos of it being a breed specific trait, it not being that, and then unexpected outcomes occurring, such as a popularity shift towards an even more dangerous breed as pitt ownership declines or ignoring or even exacerbating underlying causal relationships to environmental factors.
We’ve seen how bad data science applied to human crime rates can lead to supremely (supremacist?) misleading claims around the contributing factors with an over representation of demographic data that’s simply correlative to underlying causative environmental factors.
So if we both know full well that saying “XYZ demographic is 2-3x more likely to commit violent crimes so we should get rid of XYZ demographic from the population” is an outrageously bad faith argument predicated on poor data analysis, I’m curious what you think is materially different about the data evaluation aspects that you support the analogous claim here?
Pitbulls were specifically bred as fighting dogs to fight and kill other dogs in pits.
Don’t apply human logic to dog breeding. Dogs are specifically bred by humans to have specific traits. Humans are not bred to have specific traits.
And at least one study I’ve read showed that bad ownership and rescue status only account for 20% of dog attacks, so most attacks are not a result of bad ownership.
The closest I could find to the study you mentioned was the following:
https://positively.com/articles/fatal-dog-bites-share-common-factors/
Where yes, it says that in 21% of cases the dog was subject to abuse and neglect (one out of five is a rather large number by the way).
That same study says that in 37.5% of cases the owner had previously ‘mismanaged’ the dog in the past.
And then you have numbers like in 76.2% of cases the dog was not kept as a family pet.
Or that in 84.4% of cases the dog was not spayed or neutered.
Including this gem:
So please, tell me more about how we shouldn’t be looking at environmental factors because dogs aren’t people and with dogs it’s all about breed and nothing else…
Edit: Ah, we also have this study’s results:
Yeah, the source for that webpage doesn’t exist, so not going to believe a word on it.
Oh, a traffic offense, oh goodness they must be horrible dog owners. Seriously, nearly everyone has a traffic offense, if that’s in the criteria, then no shit it’s at 100%.
You mean this?
Patronek, G. J., Sacks, J. J., Delise, K. M., Cleary, D. V., & Marder, A. R. (2013). Co-occurrence of potentially preventable factors in 256 dog bite-related fatalities in the United States (2000-2009). Journal Of The American Veterinary Medical Association, 243(12), 1726-1736. doi:10.2460/javma.243.12.1726
Direct link: https://nationalcanineresearchcouncil.com/research_library/summary-analysis-co-occurrence-of-potentially-preventable-factors-in-256-dog-bite-related-fatalities-in-the-united-states-2000-2009/
“The source that disagrees with me doesn’t exist after not even a single Google search, so I won’t believe a word of it!”
Not when the link to said source gives a 404 doesn’t exist page. Blame your source website.
And some of those factors just apply to pits because of their breed.
76% are not given lots of human contact, because pits are violent and aggressive, and need to be kept away from people.
77% compromised ability to interact with dogs; well pits are way too strong for the vast majority of people.
Unneutered dogs being more likely to attack. Just an argument to force neuter all pits.
As for breed identification. If it be big, terrier shaped, and boxy head, it’s pit enough.
Their population is also several times that of the next most common breed.
They’re also responsible for fewer attacks and deaths PER CAPITA than German shepherds, dobermans, cane corsos, Belgian malinois, chows, rottweilers, and a number of other breeds that nobody gives a shit about because they’re not typically owned by poor people.
They also consistently pass temperament tests at a higher rate than those breeds.
But your feelings don’t care about facts.
Sources?
Fucking google it, asschode. Or just see my other posts. But those are both too much effort.
Translation - I made it up
Sorry, but you made the claim so the burden of proof lies on you.
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