It is true that pit bulls make up a hugely disproportionate number of reported dog attacks, it's also true that they are especially dangerous and have caused the most deaths by dog bite.
What many of these statistics fail to account for are environmental factors (pit bulls tend to be the most abused and most regularly abandoned dogs because of dog fighting and also because they are just a handful to properly train and care for.), it is also very difficult to gather accurate data on breed specific attacks/aggression because while pit bulls are the highest reported in most dog bite statistics, they are also not a breed as much as a group of breeds that includes:
The American Pit Bull Terrier
The American Staffordshire Terrier
The Staffordshire Bull Terrier, and
The American Bully
A study found that dogs classified as Pit Bulls only had 43.5% DNA from Pit Bull-type ancestry.
The study, carried out in two shelters in California and Arizona, also found that 62% of dogs labeled as Pit Bulls had less than a 50% DNA concentration from Pit Bull-type ancestry, Pit Bull facts and statistics show.
Identifying the right breed of dog in attacks and death is incredibly difficult. This is why the CDC stopped collecting breed-specific data in dog bite-related fatalities (DBRF) in 1998.
The fact that there’s no official data to go by makes it even harder to separate myths from facts regarding Pit Bull attacks in the US.
Okay cool, so pits might make headlines more because of their strength and ability to inflict fatal wounds easier than other breeds but that goes for most large dogs.
German Shepherds had a similar stigma back when Americans were still xenophobic toward German immigrants and there were similar attitudes around that breed in the mid twentieth century. Prior to WWII Pit Bulls were a working class icon and were as much or more known for their reputation as great working dogs and loyal and loving family dogs as fighting dogs or vicious guard dogs.
Pit Bulls were bred for a wide variety of reasons and selected for many different traits but like most dogs they were foremost bread for physical traits and secondly for their temperament toward humans.
So what happened?
Racism it's always racism.
No new owner may settle in the area so long as they possess such a dog. Critics argue that these bans are not based on sound scientific or statistical evidence—that pit bulls pose no greater risk than any other breed of dog. Advocates of these laws urge that the bans are crucial to protect the public health and safety from dangerous dogs. Yet, perhaps these concerns have less to do with dogs and more to do with the individuals who own them. Breed-specific legislation may be being used as a new form of redlining to keep minorities out of majority-white neighborhoods.
“We don’t want those people here,” a city council member said of the bans. Strong cultural ties exist between pit bull dogs and the Black community. The same is true of the Latino community. Research undertaken here to investigate this claim suggests that people of color are perceived to be the most likely owner of this breed of dog. While at the present time, actual ownership data is not available, if true ownership resembles the perceived distribution measured here, such a finding may form the basis for a legal claim. Under new law, breed-specific legislation could be challenged under the Fair Housing Act if it can be shown that these laws are disproportionately excluding minority groups.
-The Black Man's Dog: The Social Context of Breed Specific Legislation, by Ann Linder
https://law.lclark.edu/live/files/32171-25-1-third-articlepdf
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6107223/
https://www.avma.org/sites/default/files/resources/javma_000915_fatalattacks.pdf
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19644273/
https://twitter.com/GeeDee215/status/1338869829911146497
i don't really feel like there is a real difference in the differentiation you made there
if that is a breedable trait it seems fair to me to say they have been bred for fighting (not exclusively)
There are plenty of factors that can contribute to this though. A trait that makes them more resilient in the ring doesn't necessarily mean they are more naturally aggressive.
If we are to apply the same standards of materialism to all beings (which, to an extent, I believe we should) we should acknowledge that it is easier to manipulate someone into violence than it is to select for physical genetic traits. Therefore, it follows that the aggression is trained, and the capability to inflict damage is bred.
Most mammals tend to have complex social bonds especially pack animals like the ancestors of domestic dogs. Selective breeding has only occurred for a tiny fraction of the evolution of the bond between humans and canines.
i never said it did. i was just responding to you saying they aren't bred to fight
if we split it into propensity for violence & capacity to inflict violence then there is no doubt pits have a lot more of the latter than most dogs and the former is basically unprovable either way
doesn't mean you can't do both though, people have definitely bred dogs with the intention of making them better pit fighters
Idk probably shouldn't have got into this cause i don't have strong feelings either way about dangerous dog bans
Okay so what you should take away from this is that pit bulls are used as a dog whistle and a propaganda tool and they're no more dangerous than huskies or german shepherds or even standard poodles (who are actually severely prone to random aggression because of inbreeding and selecting purely for aesthetics over all else).
https://canineperspectivechicago.com/poodle-training-profile/
The whole point of this post is that pit bull hysteria is rooted in racism and classism.
telling someone you're talking to what they need to takeaway from a conversation is great craic. going to start doing that. I will stick with the opinion i have formed in my own brain for now though
im sure there are cultural and racist reasons behind the way certain dogs are targeted as dangerous but i also think people are just scared of the high capacity for violence of certain breeds, and that's understandable
other dog breeds not thought of as dangerous definitely have high levels of aggression but if they're not as physically capable at inflicting violence it's not as worrisome
maybe it should be tho
All dogs are worrisome for their violent impulses, pits just add an extra layer of danger because they're bred to be especially violent plus they are strong. A violent poodle doesn't pack the same oomph if it bites you.
So this post is for you then, there is nothing unique about pits. The reason they have the reputation they do is because of racial stereotypes and sensationalized headlines. I listed several sources you can dig into if you want to kill that brainworm.
But the point of the post was that there is probably more behind the scenes racism/classism regarding opinions on what dogs are considered violent than physical attributes. I don't think the OP was trying to start a struggle session about exactly which dogs are more capable of doing violence or the severity of the damage they could do, just that there is a fair amount of "panic" voiced about one thing openly that might be more about something else.
the second para in the post youre responding to covers that i think, I'm not discounting it as a reasoning. i think the main reason there is more panic around pit bulls than other breeds is because
They make up a disproportionate amount of reported dog attacks. The whole post then goes on to show why that's a bullshit metric.
how about they make up a significant portion of the dog attacks that are significant enough to be reported?
are you agreeing with the second clause in that quote? cause that seems like a legitimate thing to be concerned about
I'm not sure how much stock to put into the reasons you've put forward for pitbull attacks being over reported
that pit bulls are a handful to care for and train doesn't seem like a good mitigation at all, neither does the fact that they are a group of breeds rather than a single breed. if that group of breeds is over represented in attacks vs it's population size then that seems irrelevant
I don't understand the relevance of the DNA bit
misidentifying a random dog that attacks someone and runs off is a reasonable problem to bring up and it's definitely likely that people could just make the assumption that a dog was a pit because they have a bad reputation. but from the little research I've just done dog breeds aren't recorded in cases where they can't make a positive identification & pits make up two thirds of positively identified dog attack fatalities
that pits are abused is also a fair thing to bring up, but i have no way of knowing to what extent pit attacks are made by previously abused dogs. that'd just be pure guessing
i don't think the post shows anything concretely but i think staffies are cute
Positively identified by whom? I provided sources that already refute this.
by the family who owned the dogs.
can you quote where your source disproves that please
Burden of proof is on existence. I already demonstrated that the reporting is skewed by misidentification. What family are you referring to? Just look at the damn source material.
Why are you so determined to argue that pit bulls are uniquely dangerous?
I listed several sources to back this up. Go ahead and dig into those if you want to learn more. I'm not going to respond to this anymore because you're giving off big concern troll vibes.
I'm not an expert on it i just googled some shit and what came up was that it's easier to make positive identification on fatal attacks because 1 they're taken more seriously by people investigating and 2 they almost always happen to people inside the same household as the dog. the owners of the dog probably know what breed it is imo
i don't think you've demonstrated anything concretely about misidentification, at least not to the point that it mitigates the pit bulls over representation in attacks satisfactorily
I've not argued that at any point
"read the sources" isn't a good response for a specific question and you know it, if you're making a claim that you've proved something and then say that no one is going to take it seriously.
not concern trolling, just carried on responding to people who have responded to me. probably for the best to stop now though. I agree
Read the sources I provided then.
this bit or another bit?
Okay we've worked through the very first paragraph here. Literally read the rest of the post jfc I already addressed all of this and if you doubt my statements you can actually read the sources instead of cherry picking shit I already debunked. Why do you hate pit bulls so much? Think about this.
Dude you give me the strongest "Though only making up 13% of the population, black people are responsible for 52% of the reported violent crime" vibes. Like holy shit
guy who turns up at the end of an argument and claims someone has vibes is one of the coolest guys to be online
Pal, we've already had our argument. I'm just here for the show now.
I was responding to your comment, not the original post though.
I'm sorry i don't understand
Maybe I misread this as being sarcastic?
How do you square this with your argument that there is no good data available? This seems to me like you're trying to have your cake and eat it too. You're making an assertion (with no data) while dismissing all of the best data that's actually available for being imperfect.
My understanding is that pits have a different style of biting. They clamp down and don't let go for minutes, while thrashing from side to side to rip flesh. It's inherited from their history as bull-baiting dogs. This makes them more dangerous than dogs of even a similar size and strength.Dangerousness and aggressiveness are not the same thing. A rubber band gun is more likely to accidentally discharge than a firearm, but that doesn't make it more dangerous. It doesn't mean you can't love your guns or your dogs, just respect their danger.
When dogs attack something to kill it, they all do this. Every breed.
Maybe my understanding was wrong then. I thought other dogs preferred to inflict several bites or something. It looks like I could have accidentally absorbed a myth about pit bulls.
Do pit bulls have stronger jaws than huskies or poodles?
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Very comprehensive. Thanks. :rat-salute:
I don't know the stats but just from looking at pictures of pit bulls, they look like they tend to have wider heads/jaws in general. And the one that I had on the farm loved to chew on things like balls and sticks. We had to take away all the tennis balls the other dogs used to play with because he would just chew on them until the split in half. So he had some serious jaw strength and stamina but also was more obsessive about chewing on things than the other dogs so :shrug-outta-hecks:
Just giving a quick and sloppy look through Google search results, the numbers are all over the place. First entry for pit bulls was like 240 pounds of force, husky was 320 and poodle was 260. But all these numbers came from wildly different sources (one of which was a law firm :awooga:) and I don't have time to find some source that is more... academic/objective right now.
So if the instinct (or whatever we want to call it) to chew on things is higher in pit bulls then they could develop stronger jaw muscles and I'd imagine that a wider head/jaw would make it easier for them to bite and hold for longer periods of time.
The several bites thing is possibly that the animal is trying to warn or fight something to the point that it runs away rather than kill. (living on a farm and having lots of dogs, this has kinda been my experience).
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That's why I had to make this post. Remember none of us are immune to propaganda and it's most effective when we don't realize it's being done. All the hysteria around pit bulls that really took off in the 90s is a result of many overlapping factors from sensationalized headlines to racist stereotypes.
this is just how dogs kill prey - they clamp on and thrash to try and break their necks. every single breed does this, even during play, except where the behavior has been trained out. hell, you can get most dogs to do this by just playing tug-of-war with them, with a rope.
pits are just not unique. any well-founded fears people have of them apply to dogs as a whole. there's no excuse for wholesale slaughter.
Yes, I was mistaken on that part. I learn something new every day from fellow comrades.
It’s a trait that comes from the terrier side, and is most often naturally directed towards prey. If your thing is catching rodents with your face, you want to be able to take some bites to the face without immediately giving up going home. Even with selective breeding for dog-dog aggression, most dogs bred for fighting aren’t willing to fight another dog to the death and are culled or sold after being tested.
I have a dog that was seized from a huge fighting ring, is pretty scarred up, and is the undisputed wrestling champion whenever she plays with her dog friends, but her bloodlust is mostly reserved for the neighborhood rats these days.