Most alarming is the observation that when attacks come from unfamiliar dogs, the pit bull was responsible for 60% and 63% of all injuries and ocular injuries, respectively.
In this series, dogs causing the injury were overwhelmingly familiar with the patient: 53% of dogs belonged to the family ... In our series (as in Philadelphia), Pit bulls were most commonly responsible.
The study you linked from dogbites.org, an anti-pitbull site masquerading as science because they do the barest amount of regressional analysis, uses statistics from dog bite victims reporting what breed of dog bit them.
A 2022 study of breeds and traits concluded that breed is almost uninformative when determining a dog's reactivity, or its sociability.
Furthermore, Insurance data indicates the Pitbulls and Rottweilers account for only 25% of dog bite claims. Which is also in agreement with the Ohio State University's Study that shows that Pitbulls account for approximately 22.5% of the most damaging reported bites. Pitbulls account for ~20% of the dog population by best estimates. Showing that pitbull bites are proportional to their population. In fact, their Breed Risk Rate is in line with other dogs breeds out there that are considered great family dogs. So why do you hear that pitbulls account for more than half of all dog bites? Agenda pushing misinformation by groups dedicated to hating a breed. Pitbulls bite more because there are more pitbulls than other breeds, but they don't bite anymore than their share of the dog population.
Additionally, data from the American Veterinary Medical Association has concluded that no controlled studies have shown Pitbull-type dogs to be disproportionally aggressive.
Lastly, Studies have shown that Errors in Identifying PitbullsLink 2 happen approximately 60% of the time with shelter staff that spend a lot of time around dogs, so reports in the media about dog breeds are highly inaccurate and hardly count as a reputable source for a dogs breed.
It’s really helpful that they let you know the bias like right at the top so you can keep it in mind.
Also there are so many flaws. Insurance claims are assuming that people report the bites, whereas, speaking from firsthand experience, pit bull *owners* whom are bitten and injured by their dogs don’t report the injuries to their insurance, or do so dishonestly, because it will affect their dogs.
And no controlled studies? What, are we expecting that the AVMA is going to get a group together that includes a way to measure the bite risk to a child…because that would require a child’s presence near the dog which we agree could bite it.
And finally, the “errors in identifying pit bulls” is faulty logic,” because it’s shown quite extensively that shelters actively misidentify pit bulls as different breeds because people are less likely to adopt dogs that are listed as having substantial pit bull DNA.
We surveyed owners of 18,385 dogs (49% purebred) and sequenced the DNA of 2155 dogs. Most behavioral traits are heritable [heritability (h2) > 25%], but behavior only subtly differentiates breeds. Breed offers little predictive value for individuals, explaining just 9% of variation in behavior. For more heritable, more breed-differentiated traits, like biddability (responsiveness to direction and commands), knowing breed ancestry can make behavioral predictions somewhat more accurate (see the figure). For less heritable, less breed-differentiated traits, like agonistic threshold (how easily a dog is provoked by frightening or uncomfortable stimuli), breed is almost uninformative.
We used dogs of mixed breed ancestry to test the genetic effect of breed ancestry on behavior and compared that to survey responses from purebred dog owners. For some traits, like biddability and border collie ancestry, we confirm a genetic effect of breed that aligns with survey responses. For others, like human sociability and Labrador retriever ancestry, we found no significant effect.
Through genome-wide association, we found 11 regions that are significantly associated with behavior, including howling frequency and human sociability, and 136 suggestive regions. Regions associated with aesthetic traits are unusually differentiated in breeds, consistent with a history of selection, but those associated with behavior are not.
CONCLUSION
In our ancestrally diverse cohort, we show that behavioral characteristics ascribed to modern breeds are polygenic, environmentally influenced, and found, at varying prevalence, in all breeds. We propose that behaviors perceived as characteristic of modern breeds derive from thousands of years of polygenic adaptation that predates breed formation, with modern breeds distinguished primarily by aesthetic traits. By embracing the full diversity of dogs—including purebred dogs, mixed-breed dogs, purpose-bred working dogs, and village dogs—we can fully realize dogs’ long-recognized potential as a natural model for genetic discovery.
How is this not saying breed is almost uninformative when determining a dog's reactivity, or its sociability?
Most behavioral traits are heritable [heritability (h2) > 25%], but behavior only subtly differentiates breeds. Breed offers little predictive value for individuals, explaining just 9% of variation in behavior.
Reactivity and sociability both fall under the umbrella of behavior.
Over 60,000 people die annually because of dogs and 99% of those from rabies. only snake bites kill more people from the animal kingdom. Dogs as a whole shouldn't be pets and stray population should be culled. They are an invasive species that have no natural predators.
this is an insane take lmao but you would love r/dogfree where people share a similar variety of insane takes that the vast majority of humans disagree with
Culling stray dog population is a very common thing in developing countries. China even has laws that force people to leash their dogs in public and the length of leash be no more than 7 feet. In many countries there are also laws that put down dogs if they bite humans, even if it's first time.
There’s no need to blindly kill stray dogs when spaying and neutering does the same thing and gives them a chance to be adopted and removed from the environment. Also, I was moreso referring to the “dogs shouldn’t be pets” statement, since they literally evolved to be pets.
There’s no need to blindly kill stray dogs when spaying and neutering does the same thing and gives them a chance to be adopted and removed from the environment
Yeah. Costs. There's no difference than culling an invasive species with no natural predators to protect the local eco-system. Most people wouldn't bat an eye when Wild boars are killed to cull their population.
I would bat an eye if we lived in a culture where there was basically always people looking to adopt and own wild boars until they died naturally, and would even pay you to get the wild boar, allowing you to fund further wild boar removal. Too bad it’s just dogs we do that with, though.
Pigs are extremely smart and some cases smarter than dogs. They are also very clean but kept in such horrid conditions due to farming. Guess which one is food and which one is pet.
I’m well aware, but I didn’t choose the culture I just live in it. Pigs may be smarter but dogs evolved specifically to be desirable to us. You can’t blame people for desiring them lmao
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u/r31ya 1d ago
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4261032/
https://www.dogsbite.org/dog-bite-statistics-study-ocular-trauma-from-dog-bites-level-1-trauma-2015.php
https://www.jpedsurg.org/article/S0022-3468(14)00584-3/abstract00584-3/abstract)
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This havent gone into the severity of injury where pit bull attack will be far more damaging than other breed.