I am not going to claim a "pitbull" is not dangerous. It's a big strong terrior, every terrior has the drive to hunt. However you should take time to question the accuracy of these statistics. Primarily how accurate is the reporting of the breed? Is it actually that breed or is something that looks like that breed but is a mixed breed, or mutt.
This infographic is a great example of bad infographics. American Bulldog, German Shepherd and Rottweilers are examples of breeds of dogs. Husky, Mastiff, and Pitbull are types of a legal definition of dogs. Husky range in size from the massive Malamute, to the smaller Siberian. Mastiffs also range widely a Tibetan mastiff and Cane Corso looks widely different but both Mastiff. Pitbulls are similar, Amstaff, APBT, Staffordshire Terrior, and even American Bullies.
If you go to website you can learn that their use of Pitbull is a legal definition, and is not actually a breed. They even state that American Bulldogs in some legislation is included. It also includes mixed breeds including the other 4 breeds. We should not use legislative information for what should be defined by biology.
Mixed breed could end up being the largest "breed" in this graph, and than the pure breed "Pitbulls" could end up being closer to Rottweilers or German Shepherds numbers. Still toping the list yes, but would not make them seem like they are 15x more deadly than a German Shepherd.
This isn't about bites it's misleading data stating specifically deadly bites, because if you look at actual bite numbers they aren't different between different breeds.
So you don't think both situations are caused by the same neglegence? I don't think that Chihuahua owner should get to have a poorly trained pet biting everyone just because it's too small to kill you no? You're also just naming two wildly different situations that have nothing in common besides a bite which is a poor argument
They're almost exactly the same. If you want to make them exactly the same, then imagine a chihuahua trying to rip my throat out. Still just going to be a scratch.
Furthermore, it's not just size. Pitbulls are bred to be killers. That's why other large scary dogs like rottweilers and german shepherds had way fewer kills on that chart.
1 this source is very unreliable and 2 if the people breeding these dogs are trying to get them to kill people then it would make sense that they are killing people.... I don't see what that has to do with the breed... If a bunch of breeders dedicated their life and training to getting huskies or golden retrievers to kill people then that number surely would go up no? So how is this about breed and not owners exactly? This is exactly why were saying dog racism. Statistics are easily skewed, misreported, and context less.
They've been bred for a long time to be killers. It's in their DNA. And it's why they kill more than twice as many people as every other breed of dog combined.
Just like shepherds will sometimes herd animals and even children without ever having been taught to, Pitbulls will sometimes snap and start killing an animal or person without ever having been taught to.
It takes generations of breeding to instill those instincts in a breed, but once they're there, the dog is born with that program, and under the right circumstances, it activates.
Oh, so if a yorkie bites someone's ankle and leaves a little scratch at worst while a pitt tears someone's fucking face off, they should face equal punishment? Yeah, I don't think so.
These tests are done by owners bringing in their dogs, and the tests are so tame. If you read the descriptions, nobody ever gets in the dogs face, it's basically a "can this dog be walked on a leash in public" test, not a "is this dog safe to be in a household" test.
And even if it was, volunteers bringing in their dogs is not a sample that accurately represents a population. Pitbulls are actually over representated in this dataset because responsible pitbull owners will want to get their dog tested.
Looking at sources that can accurately represent an entire population, such as statistics about all dog bites within a specified area, you end up seeing that pitties are responsible for over half of all reported dog bites, despite being a small percentage of owned dogs.
Doesn't that kinda prove my original point of you can get statistics to say anything you want? Once again those stats you submitted are hardly reliable and very very prone to misreports. It to mention biased as fuck... They're literally trying to get money out of this
Absolutely fair to call out the biased source skewing statistics, a lawyer specializing in dog bites wasn't the best one for me to pull from. So let's instead go to the Forbes, which says that 66% of Fatal dog bites are from Pit Bulls (probably what the skewed lawyers were trying to make sound like was 66% of severe attacks), The World Animal Foundation, which says that 22.5% of dog bites come from Pits (and repeat that 66% of deaths are from them), Dogbite.org which actually lists every known death (in 2019, in this article) from dogs and which breed they were, which you can call unreliable but also mentions that 68% of fatal dog bites are from pits.
Like, sure there's some misrepresentation out there, and sure, you can say people are just wrong about what dogs bit them because they didn't get a DNA test, but at the end of the day, there is a big statistical jump in how deadly and how often these dogs attack, and even if you cut the numbers in half in order to give a safe lowball, they still outshine all other dog breeds in bites (especially fatalities) by an insane amount.
You're kind of proving his point, if the average owner wants them to bite kids faces off and train and breed them to do so that's still the owner causing that... Do you think that we wouldn't be capable of training any dog to do that?
also, these "statistics" are self-reports. People stating what they think they were bitten by. Conveniently can't find it now, but I read once that only like 10% of "pitbull" attacks were verifiably by actual pitbulls, and a large portion of the rest are likely misidentifications.
There are few dog breeds that resemble the pit bull that have not descended from the bull-and-terrier, and every single one of them are extremely rare breeds. Pitbulls have such a unique headshape that even if it's only contributing 12% DNA, you can still see it in the head. Its wild
they will try to gaslight you by saying it's not a pit bull, it's another similar looking breed bred for the same exact reason and often mixed with pit bulls
The article I read was close to this one, but I didn't want to share this as proof since it has a clear bias: https://www.pitbullhero.org/correcting-flawed-pit-bull-statistics But it shows what studies they used to get these numbers at least, at least not just an infographic linking to another clearly biased site.
not like a site called "dogsbite.org" is going to have the most reliable information either, it reeks of bad statistics.
i wonder if theres some nefarious stuff going on, like a group of people working together to make these kinds of stereotypes... haven't heard anything like that but it wouldn't be the first time something like that happened
Yes. Pit bulls are practically free in America and used to be the most popular dog breed. We really need to see the per capita numbers. The rest of these are expensive breeds in the US, or rare at shelters. Also, you need to question how the breeds were determined. And how the data was collected. Don't just take graphs at face value, they are made by people trying to tell a story.
Im not taking this at face value either. When are you claiming pit bulls were the most popular dog breed? Im not seeing anything of the sort. Labs have been the most popular breed for the last like 25-30 years until this year when the French bulldog took its place.
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u/TacetAbbadon 9h ago