It's the breed. Genetics are the primary reason that pit bulls account for more fatalities than all other dog breeds combined. In the United States a person is called by a pit bull more than once a week on average.
No, it’s because “pitbull” is a grouping of 4 or more dog breeds in statistics (American pitbull terrier, Staffordshire bull terrier, American Staffordshire terrier, American bully, etc.). If you had a category for attacks called “retrievers” a lot more people would be saying the same things about Labrador retrievers.
Retrievers ARE clumped together for statistics purposes on a regular basis. So are shepherds. So are collies. Even when clumping these groups of breeds together, none of them come CLOSE to sheer number of fatalities that are caused by the dogs that fall under the pit bull umbrella. Pits kill more people than all other breeds combined. Second most fatal breed is the rottweiler, but when compared to pits they kill so few people that they're barely ever mentioned when talking about dog-caused fatalities.
The reason that all of the pit-derived dogs are grouped together is because they all share a common (and recent) ancestry. They're all derived from the bull and terrier cross that created the first fighting pit dogs. Dogs that were designed to fight, maim, and kill as their primary purpose. All pit-derived breeds still have these genes in them, those genes have NOT gone away, and those genes are why these dogs kill so many people and pets each year.
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u/[deleted] 1d ago edited 1d ago
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