My co-worker was attacked by a dog...

[Tymon]

You can take a wolf, or a lion, or whatnot into a household as a small animal and raise it to like people. It probably will, and will probably get through it's lifespan without any incident.

Though, there's always a small chance that it will go berserk and attack someone.

Most dogs today like labs and such were domesticated through breeding, by picking the most docile of certain dogs, then breeding them, then breeding their offspring, and so-on

I'm sure people piss off these lions and wolves all the time that cause them to attack, but it isn't a good defense when you consider that there are owners that treat their dogs like absolute shit, and you don't see these golden retrievers or shiatzu's going mad and killing children left and right, do you?

Back onto the subject on the thread though, which is pit bulls.. pit bulls are interesting.

They're not even genetically very good at fighting. Studies were done, their bites do less physical harm than most dogs even in their own family (which are Terriers)

If you really wanted to breed a killer you would go for some kind of wolf-german shepherd hybrid or something like that and feed it raw meat, not a fucking terrier >_>

that said, these same studies can't really figure out why they're so aggressive. it's kind of an enigma, it seems.

[mootsfox]

I'm more of a proponent of good owners making good dogs, but this is related and interesting.

There have been experiments done with foxes, selectively breeding for "tameness". They took the animals with the shortest flight distance / least amount of fear or aggressive behavior exhibited towards their human captors, and bred those animals together. By the tenth generation, nearly twenty percent of all foxes were friendly and quite tame. From this article:

"As the experiment continued, something else began to happen. By generations eight and ten, the foxes started developing spots. Some of them were even marked like border collies. Some foxes developed shorter legs and tails than the wild type, while others had tails that curled over their backs. Even more unusually, a few vixens had estrus cycles longer than normal, and a few also had estrus cycles twice a year. All of these traits are traits of domestic animals."

So... tameness is not only something that you can selectively breed for, but also something that is tied genetically to other physical traits. If you can breed for tameness, you can probably breed the other way... no?

Russians dude. Crazy, yet interesting.

[Kenai]

^^^ Interesting. I would guess it has to do with chemical traits that they pass on. Probably more to it though.


Funny story is that the most aggressive dogs I've run into are poodles. I love all breeds of dogs, but they seemed so...irritable, ready to go for the ankles. I dunno.

[mootsfox]

Imagine that, they are already at the right height for a good kick.

[zoobernut]

Black people weren't selectively bred for hundreds of years for specific traits, I can't believe you're even trying to make that comparison.



No one is saying every dog from an aggressive breed is going to be aggressive purely due to genetics, but if you don't think dogs selectively bred for aggressive behavior, aren't more likely to be aggressive than a breed that wasn't, than you're an idiot.



They were bred to attack predators like wolves, and assert dominance over animals like sheep, how is that not aggressive?

Aggressive breeds are not bred to be aggressive they are trained to be aggressive. Aggressive breeds are bred to have traits that allow them to be sturdier dogs that are less likely to be hurt during combat. Case in point, a rottweiler or a pitbull have more muscle mass and are stronger dogs. This also increases your bias because when one of those dogs snaps it is a big deal, when a small dog snaps not as much harm is done. This does not have any effect on the statistics of breeds and how often they snap or go crazy but it does color your judgment of breeds because it doesn't make the news when a chihuahua goes crazy and scratches or bites someone.

My wife was a dog groomer for about 6 years and she dealt with every dog breed imaginable in several different areas and from her perspective the little dogs were more aggressive and bit more often than the large dogs.