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Most aggressive dog breeds
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2025
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Ofcourse you can breed aggression, its so absurd to claim that you cant.
We have bite statistics. Every year, pit bull and pit mixes far outnumber every other breed for human bite attacks, consistently, and always make up far more than half (to the tune of ~70%) of all total bites, by breed. Every single year.
Yet people ignore statistics and are eager to jump on the pibble defense train. “My little angel would never bite anyone!”
Maybe. But numbers don’t lie. Just stop breeding them. It’s cruel to people, and it’s cruel to the dogs themselves, that the breed continues to be perpetuated. Breed-specific behaviors are visceral and strong, whether you have a retriever, a pointer, a herder, or a throat mangler. The breed behavior can be invoked at any time, relatively easily.
A friend of my wife and I got a pit bull a couple months ago. She was going on and on about how sweet he is and how he would never hurt anyone. Last week, it mauled her roommate. Nearly took his hand off while he was changing into his work clothes. His career is likely over and she's still defending the dog.
I think that dog is legally required to be put down no?
I have no idea. I know the city animal control has it now. She is trying to get him released, though.
I guess it depends on where you live yeah...
Lets hope it doesnt get to hurt anyone again.
And even with this personal evidence, you get defenders downvoting the story - not because it doesn't add to the discussion, buy because it doesn't suit their narrative.
I hope the roommate is able to find a good surgeon and get the help he needs, that sounds terrible if it could call for a career change.
Not really commenting on the claims made in this argument, but this is anecdotal evidence. Meaning that someone who claims all pitbulls are sweet and docile because of their personal experience is just as valid of an argument as someone saying all pitbulls are bad because of their personal experience.
I don't really care about pitbulls one way or the other, but I find it worrying that a lot of the times the debates against the breed follow similar argument structures to those utilized by racist pulling up FBI crime stats about black people.
I think you and I have different ideas about what the word "evidence" means. A story told by a random user about something that happened to their friend's roommate is not really something I consider or weigh heavily when evaluating things. There could be relevant details omitted from the story, or it could be invented whole cloth, in any case, it isn't statistically significant.
I understand the bite statistics but you have to keep in mind how those are reported too.
No one is reporting their neighbor's chihuahua taking a bite at their boot. Bites from smaller breeds mostly go unreported.
It does give a point as to why pit bulls and other large breeds are dangerous though. Whether they are more common or not, they certainly are far, far more serious when it happens.
Responsible ownership has always been an issue with pitbulls, as irresponsible people tend to adopt and breed them.
This is only said by people who've never actually taken a class about statistics.
Numbers may not lie, but they also don't make assertions. People suck at interpreting data and that fact is constantly utilized to mislead people.
I'm not saying this to defend pitbulls, just that bite statistics don't really tell us anything about innate aggression in dog breeds. Just like FBI statistics don't tell us about innate criminality in ethnicity.
Those bite statistics don't make any attempt to rule out misleading variables. It could be that pitt bull bites are reported more often because of the extent of harm they cause. It could be that people who gravitate towards breeds who are thought to be more aggressive are wanting and are training for aggression.
Statistics is hard, and can generally be used to shape opinions on just about anything.
This massively differs per country. Pitbull bites are generally nastier than other bites so they're overreported. It's also partially the public image of pitbulls being nasty dogs that gets them reported more often.
Historically the "most dangerous breed" has changed quite a bit. For a while Great Danes were the worst, then it was Dogo Argentinis, Malinois, German Shepherd, Akitas, Labradors, Jack Russells, etc...
In France for example pitbulls only rank 12th for most bite incidents.
Research on it has been mixed, with studies focusing on nature finding that the breed matters surprisingly little when it comes to aggression. It seems more likely that there's a certain group of owners that handle their dogs irresponsibly, which tend to popularize specific breeds. This seems more likely because places that banned 'dangerous' breeds don't see a decrease in bite attacks; the owners of the dangerous breeds mostly get new dogs, which then just bite people again.
This is because pitbulls are a restricted breed and France. So either people don't have them, or they get the vet to say it's some other breed (more often than not)
Point being that different dog breeds are listed at the top of being most dangerous in France.
You're still allowed to own a pitbull in France, but you do require a training and need to muzzle them in public (but not at home).
Yes, when pitbull ownership is restricted, pitbulls fall from the number one spot for most dangerous
Obviously. Point being that these owners take different dogs which then rise in the ranking to take the pitbulls place.
Yes, and to the original point you used french rankings to attempt to make, the ranking of pitbulls is not because they are treated better or just culturally aren't regarded as dangerous, it is because they are restricted legally.
No, the point I was making regarding what's culturally considered dangerous didn't relate to France directly, that was about the US which went through various phases of panic regarding certain dog breeds. I only brought up France because there different dog breeds have risen to the top of the bite attack statistics. The restriction on pitbulls just let other dog breeds rise to the top. The breed matters less than who owns them. In France, the more irresponsible dog owners gravitate to German Shepherds and Labradors whereas in the US it's pitbulls.
I don't mind the French ban on pitbulls, because their attacks can be significantly more damaging than those of other breeds. But it won't really reduce the number of incidents.
Do you have evidence that other breed attack rates have risen, as opposed to the attacks by staffy/bully/pit breeds simply not occuring? I wasn't able to find this evidence in eurostat.
This source shows that pitbull bans did nothing to reduce bite attacks in Spain, showing the same numbers 5 years before and after the ban.
They also state this:
Then there's this one:
Council Bluff, Iowa, banned pitbulls, and saw Boxer and Labrador Retriever bites rise as those were the breeds people switched to.
Same source shows that it Winnipeg, Canada, instead saw Rottweiler bite attacks increase.
And from this source:
Bestfriends.org advocates for pitbull acceptance providing an opinion here, and I don't see the actual data that says the rates of dog attacks remained the same when staffy/bully/pit ownership is reduced.
If what you hypothesize is true, we should expect to see the overall rate of dog attacks stay the same, while proportionally other breeds become responsible for more of the total sum of dog attacks. Have you found actual statistics to back this assertion up? Your links all point to the home page of the sites, rather than stats.
I didn't put those links in there, that's just Lemmy auto-linking. The full cited source has a bit more info, but it's quite a rabbithole of sources tbh.
I found https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8730379/ which does have some hard stats, showing that a law enacted in 1991 did little to nothing to prevent bites, whilst also showing the most dangerous breeds bite about as much as other humans do.
This study seems to show that of 134 mammalian bites studied, about 73% were from dog bites both before and after the dangerous dogs act. I don't have full access to the article but the abstract seems to imply that dangerous breed attacks represented a small percentage of the total bite treatments.
I'm not sure it can conclude that the rate of attacks overall stayed the same when dangerous breed ownership rates as a whole reduced. The conclusion seems to be that "dog bites are still a similar percentage of mammalian bites" without regard to the overall rate of dog ownership and the impact of the law on dangerous dog ownership rates specifically (but perhaps it is inside the study?)
One would expect that this sort of statistic would be easy to find if it were true, given the advocacy of bully-breed groups.
The study measures the totals before and after the ban. If the totals did not change, then one can reasonably conclude there was little to no effect (as that was the point of the ban; reduce bite attacks). The only way you could still justify the ban worked is if dog ownership increased after the ban, which seems unlikely (and iirc the study touches on that).
I mean ultimately the burden of proof isn't on them. There are some statistics that seem to support them. If thess BSL bans worked, one would expect evidence to show that they did, but that's seemingly completely absent too. The vast majority of independent organisations seem to be against these bans.
If these bans worked, where are the statistics that show they do? What about the myriad of studies saying bite incidents are caused by neglect of the dog rather than breed?
But this study doesn't say anything at all about the dog bite rate does it? It takes 134 mammalian bite victims and reports the percentage that came from dogs. I could be convinced by a study that showed a rate of dog bites of 13/100000 before an effective bully breed restriction and a rate within statistical significance after the restriction was in place.
I can't really find clear (or free) statistics on this either way. However, it seems clear that any reduction in rate of ownership of dangerous breeds should reduce the overall bite rate. Is your hypothesis that by reducing ownership rate of a particular breed (bully breeds, in this case), other dangerous breeds:
Become more popular and continue to bite at the same rate
Do not increase in rate of ownership, yet bite more to keep the overall bite rate the same
?
If you mean #2, this is an extraordinary claim that doesn't stand without evidence. If you mean #1, maybe you have a point, but hard to evaluate without access to the stats. If you mean #1, do you think a restriction on all dangerous breeds would reduce the overall bite rate? (Coincidentally, France's restriction applies to all dangerous breeds)
The point is that there's not really such a thing as a dangerous breed. There's dangerous dog owners though, and that's different. When you ban a breed, most of these owners will switch to a different breed (which inevitably rises in the dog bite statistics). That's mostly what that study showed, despite the ban on dangerous breeds, there weren't any fewer bite incidents.
In theory, sure. But this assumes that certain breeds are inherently more dangerous, which is largely unproven. Most larger studies seem to dispute this.
France's bite rate isn't substantially lower than neighbouring countries that don't have these bans. In practice, it seems these bans do little to nothing to reduce bites, which is an indicator that the breed isn't the issue.
It is an extraordinary claim that so called non dangerous breeds become more dangerous when so called dangerous breeds are restricted. I don't think you can compare bite rates across borders because access to care, statistic collection methodology, dog ownership culture, etc are all confounding factors.
You're making the logical error that the amount of bites indicates that a breed is dangerous. The claim I (and many others) make is that there's no such thing as a dangerous breed.
As an analogy, suppose the government finds that cars with big flame stickers stuck on them get more speeding tickets, or end up in more accidents. Does the sticker make the car go faster? Would you expect the accident rate to go down if the government banned flame stickers? Or would you expect cars with lightning stickers to suddenly cause more trouble?
Ultimately, the owner is responsible and studies have shown that the owner is by far the strongest indicator of whether or not there will be problems.
The studies don't seem to show that. In you analogy, it's not stickers, it's faster cars. Would you expect that if faster cars were banned, those owners would drive slower cars equally as fast as faster cars keeping the rate of speeding tickets?
This is an extraordinary claim that requires definitive evidence. You can't just come to a conclusion that "ultimately the owner is responsible" without evidence.
Well that's the point of contention.
Actually, yes! They might not go over the speed limit as much, but they're likely to break it just as often. Just about every car can go over the legal speed limit, these owners don't care as much about safety to they're about as likely to break the law in a Lambo than in a BMW or a Renault.
I've already given you a study that showed no changes before and after a ban. At this point the claim really isn't so extraordinary, and I expect you to provide some statistic or evidence that a ban does work.
The owner being responsible is an assertion, not a conclusion. I've also already cited studies for you that found that how owners interact with and treat their dog is a very significant predictor when it comes to bite attacks.
I can respect the need to see statistics, but I don't really think that if one side present evidence with statistics that are possibly flawed in some way, the correct solution is to call it unbelievable and side with the other side that hasn't presented any concrete evidence or statistics showing anything definitive.
Yea and black people commit more crime. Some statistics aren't telling you the truth.
Black people aren’t bred for crime.
All domestic dog breeds enjoy the same material conditions as other breeds. Pit bulls aren’t living with poverty, scarcity, lack of opportunity, and systemic injustice compared to other dogs.
Good job completely and utterly failing to understamd how i was pointing at your racism towards dogs, not claiming racism towards humans... YOU are the one assuming bad things of animals you do not understand.
I don't think MotoAsh was ever comparing people to dog breeds.
As I understood, they were using that comment as an example of how statistics can provid a skewed view about a certain topic.
To your comment though, pit bulls do tend to see different living conditions to some other breeds. Irresponsible ownership is a real problem for pit bulls.
They are strong and hard to train. I don't think they should all be put down, but I do agree that not just anyone should raise one.
With humans, there is literally no genetical study that could suggest this. Also, black people have existed for millenniums, and have by nature developed something called empathy
However, dogs are just not as genetically advanced. Them not being totally hostile is something that developed a couple thousand years ago when humans started domesticating them (and that's something you can look up from non Eugenics based papers.)
So the same way we can make people into monsters, we can also make dogs into those, but way easier. And with Pitbulls, you can do those super easily since they just haven't evolved because breeders bred them that way
They literally did the opposite with foxes. Some guy kept breeding the nicest ones until he got a "breed" that wouldn't want to murder you on sight. I'm pretty sure levels of aggression absolutely are something innate in some animals.
"Some guy"
Come on now, let's not buzzfeed our facts here!
Dmitry Belyayev is the guy, though work continued long after his death
The program has been quite successful, although you still have a high-energy animal with a strong odor. I'd still like to have one, tho.
Thanks for adding the credit where it's due!
I had just gotten to work and was browsing Lemmy before I had to actually get started so I didn't spend the time to look up who actually did it lol
So, indeed, "some guy."
A specific guy whose name is not a mystery
Russian silver fox im pretty sure
Also he did it both ways. On population selected for nice behavior became dog like. One population selected for aggression. The second population goes insane when someone enters the room trying to attack through the cage door.
Exactly. I mean, dogs are wolves that were bred to be less aggressive and more suitable to be companions to human. Of course it can go the other way.
Science and the American Veterinary Medical Association would love to have a word with you. But I guess you do love the literal pitbull hate community so who cares what you think on the matter.
Do you have a source for that? Because everything I've read says completely the opposite. The 'science' I'm aware of says that genetic tendency to aggression is very much a thing, even in humans.
It is a thing, but most controlled studies haven’t found pitbulls to be inherently more aggressive than other breeds, just more dangerous if they happen to attack. Any dog that is poorly socialized will probably attack someone sooner or later, they just weren’t bred to latch on and shred things with their jaws like pitbulls were. So maybe there is a discussion to be had about “dangerous” breeds, but it’s not a genetics one.
Really? "Science"? Hahaha
The "nature/nurture" debate is a question of how much influence each has - it's not a binary question, but a continuum.
And if the AMVA is saying aggression is solely taught, then they lack any credibility whatsoever - that's an utterly unscientific perspective.
I say this having worked with vets, competed in obedience trials, and trained numerous dogs (with the assistance of very successful trainers). Each dog is different, but there are very clear traits in breeds, achieved by... breeding for those traits.
It's both. It's insane to me someone can watch animals instinctively display insanely complex behaviors untaught (e.g. herding by australian shepards) and the scientific research to reduce aggression in a related species before coming to the conclusion that there is no way whatsoever that nature is a significant component. Oh, and just completely ignore breeds bred for traits and behaviors seemed desirable for every domesticated animal.
Nature has no place at all it's only nurture. Sure.