Posted on 08/21/2018 12:01:39 PM PDT by Norski
A five-year review of dog-bite injuries from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, published in 2009 in the journal Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, found that almost 51 percent of the attacks were from pit bulls, almost 9 percent were from Rottweilers and 6 percent were from mixes of those two breeds...
In the 13-year period of 2005 through 2017, canines killed 433 Americans. Pit bulls contributed to 66% (284) of these deaths. Combined, pit bulls and rottweilers contributed to 76% of the total recorded deaths...
Seems to have quite a bit to do with the breed....
absolutely- but if the dog attacks it must be put down. Of course if people are in your fenced in yard uninvited, and the dog attacks, he’s just doing his job, as far as I am concerned.
If any dog is running loose and goes after people to hurt them? Dog needs killing.
Thanks for posting information on these dogs from hell. It’s a valuable public service.
behavior noted is described and dissected in at least one book by Alexandria Semyonova :
The science of how behavior is inherited in aggressive dogs
November 10, 2015 by Merritt Clifton
Some people have their heads in the sand about the origins of dog behavior.
by Alexandra Semyonova
Probably most people recognize that every dog breed results from human manipulation of inherited physical traits.
Until recently, most people probably also recognized that much dog behavior is also a result of manipulating inheritance: if you want to do sheep trials, you get a border collie. If you get a beagle, he will likely become instantly deaf to your calls if he picks up a scent to track.
But after discussion started about perhaps banning breeds who often attack and kill, defenders of these breeds began to dispute the heritability of any kind of dog behavior.
Conformation
Only when behavioral inheritance is understood, beginning with basic biological concepts, can we have a clear and honest discussion about aggression in domestic dogs. First we must understand the relationship between “physical conformation” and “behavioral conformation,” which may be seen as opposite sides of the same coin.
“Physical conformation” describes how a dog has been bred to become physically shaped specifically for the task we want him to perform. The purpose-bred dog’s body––brain, skeleton, muscles, and metabolism––will be different from those of other dogs. The dog will feel physically comfortable doing the job, whatever it is.
The border collie is physically designed for the stalking stance and for switching easily and often from standing to lying down to standing again. A greyhound enjoys sprinting, with a deep chest that easily provides enough oxygen to the dog’s muscles to fuel a burst of high speed. The same deep chest means the greyhound cannot run marathons because the deep chest prevents a greyhound from losing heat efficiently.
The greyhound’s brain has been shaped by selective breeding to steer the legs in a gait that provides maximum speed in a sprint. The unique composition of a husky’s skeleton, muscles and brain enables a husky to pull a sled with a different gait, and to sustain a brisk pace for long distances.
The greyhound runs by leaping, the husky by pushing, always with one foot on the ground. Each dog is genetically wired to use the specific body the dog has.
Selecting for performance
Dog breeders have for centuries selected for particular traits by simply watching how a dog performs. They have bred dogs for specific tasks by removing the dogs who perform less well from their breeding stock. Sometimes they will cross in a dog breed they think will add traits to perform the task better. Breeders select for performance without always knowing exactly which traits they are breeding for. For example, until recently no one realized the husky was being bred for a particular heat economy; they just chose the dogs who kept running the longest. Eventually, successful breeders produce dogs who are physically shaped to do the dog’s task better than any other dog, no matter how well the other dog is trained.
“Physical conformation” leads to “behavioral conformation.” First of all, each dog’s brain is genetically predisposed to grow to efficiently direct the body it is born in. Then the dog’s brain adapts itself further to the body it is in as it grows in the developing puppy. There is no gene for running or stalking, but there are genes that give a dog four legs and make those legs longer, shorter, more or less flexible, and so forth. It is because of the action of the genes that confer differently shaped bodies and brains that the pointer enjoys pointing, the border collie stalks and stares, the Newfoundland floats in cold water, and so on.
Selecting for aggression
Just as we cannot make a dog into something the dog has no genetic capacity to be, we cannot prevent a dog from being what the dog is genetically predisposed to be. Because inherited postures and behaviors are suitable for the body and brain the dog was born with, they are internally motivated and internally rewarded: they feel good. This means that inherited behavioral traits are practically impossible to extinguish by manipulating external environmental stimuli.
In breeding dogs to perform certain tasks or have a certain look, humans often select (sometimes inadvertently) for abnormalities in body and behavior. We do this by looking for mutations and then breeding for them, or by crossing breeds to get combinations of traits. to speed the process up. A clear case of this is the old English bull dog, who can hardly walk, hardly breathe, and cannot be born except by Caesarean section. The bull dog has also been crossed into other breeds by people who wanted to increase aggression in a breed without waiting for mutations to appear.
There is such a thing as normal aggression in dogs, as in all animals. Maternal defensiveness, territorial defense, and predatory behavior and depend on different neuronal and hormonal mechanisms, and are all normal coping responses. These dog behaviors have been accepted by humans in the process of domestication, as long as the behaviors can be foreseen.
Serotonergic dysfunction
But abnormal disinhibited behavior is not functional, and it is unpredictable. Although high arousal and sudden attack can be functional in certain environments, this behavior is pathological in a safer environment, where a high level of arousal and aggressiveness are not necessary and only lead to unnecessary attacks and injuries. Research implicates the frontal cortex, subcortical structures, and lowered activity of the serotonergic system in impulsive aggression in both dogs and humans. Impulsive aggressive behavior in dogs seems to have a different biological basis than appropriate aggressive behavior.
)
Kathelijne Peremans, DVM discovered this by studying two different populations of impulsively aggressive dogs. Each dog had executed one or more attacks without the classical preceding warnings, and the severity of the attacks was out of all proportion to environmental stimuli. Peremans found a significant difference in the frontal and temporal cortices of these dogs, but not in the subcortical areas, compared to normal dogs. Peremans also found significant dysfunctions of the serotonergic systems among these dogs. Serotonergic dysfunction has been widely shown in many different species to be connected to abnormal, impulsive aggression.
Peremans studied dogs of various breeds, selected purely on the basis of their behavior. Peremans was not interested in implicating any particular breed, but rather in finding the mechanism behind the behavior in any dog it occurred in. She found that all of the dogs with a history of abnormal impulsive aggression shared the same physical abnormalities in the brain. The gender of the dog made no difference. Neither did whether the dog was castrated or spayed.
Peremans left open the possibility that we will later find other physical factors that contribute to abnormal impulsive aggression. For example, the adrenergic system may also play an important role.
Heritability of behavior
Another researcher, Linda Van Den Berg, investigated specifically the heritability of impulsive aggression among golden retriever, a breed rarely involved in fatal and disfiguring attacks. The goal was find out whether impulsive aggressive behavior was inherited in those few golden retrievers who exhibit it, and if so, to isolate the gene responsible for the behavior. Van Den Berg found high heritability of impulsive aggression, but did not succeed in isolating the responsible gene(s).
The heritability of abnormal aggression in certain breeds of dogs can no longer be denied. The bodies of these dogs have been selected to execute a killing bite more efficiently than other breeds. These dogs share physical conformation to the task of killing, including exaggerated jaw muscles, heavy necks and shoulders, and body mass that makes defense against an attack much more difficult. Among people who want dogs who can kill, these are the breeds of choice because they are physically more fit for it than other breeds.
Dogo Argentino
Dogo Argentino
Behavioral conformation
But breeders also selected for behavioral conformation. To perform well, a fighting dog had to attack without provocation or warning, and to continue attacking regardless of the response of the other animal. Bull and bear-baiting dogs had to be willing to attack in the absence of the species-specific signs that normally provoke aggression, responding to the mere presence of another animals, and not stopping in response to external stimuli. The Dogues du Bordeaux used to guard extended farmlands in France, the Boerbulls used similarly in South Africa, and the fugitive slave-chasing dogs of Latin America, such as the Dogo Argentino and Fila Brasiliero, all were selected to specifically for a propensity to kill.
As they selected for performance, breeders could not know exactly which physical changes they were selecting for. But research now shows that selection for aggressive performance includes consistently selecting for very specific abnormalities in the brain. These abnormalities appear in many breeds of dog as an accident or anomaly, which breeders then attempt to breed out of the dogs. In the case of the aggressive breeds, the opposite occurred. Rather than excluding abnormally aggressive dogs from their breeding stock, breeders focused on creating lineages in which all the dogs would carry the genes causing them to reliably exhibit the desired impulsive aggressive behavior.
“That aggression is not heritable is not tenable”
Now that we know exactly which brain abnormalities the breeders of fighting dogs have been selecting, the assertion that this aggression is not heritable is no longer tenable. It is also not tenable to assert that not all the dogs of these breeds will carry the genes that make them dangerous. These genes may occasionally drop out through random accident, just as golden retriever may acquire the genes to be impulsively aggressive. But the failure to have these genes, in the aggressive breeds, is just that––a failure. It is therefore misleading to assert that the aggressive breeds will only have the selected genes as a matter of accident, or that most of them will be fit to interact safely with other animals and humans.
As in the pointer, the husky, the greyhound, and the border collie, the genes of aggressive breeds have been selected so that certain postures and behaviors just simply feel good. These dogs will seek opportunities to execute the behaviors they have been bred for. Because these behaviors are internally motivated and rewarded, they are not subject to extinction. Learning and socialization do not prevent these dogs’ innate behaviors from appearing.
Adaptive response
Environments such as the fighting pit, confrontations with tethered bulls and bears, and the pursuit of escaping slaves, for which these behaviors were selected as an adaptive response, are so extreme that there is no appropriate context for these behaviors in normal life. Functional in the pit or facing the bull or bear, these behaviors must, in all other contexts, be called pathological. Because the behavior selected for was impulsive aggression, by definition this behavior will always emerge suddenly and unpredictably.
Speculating in favor of the aggressive breeds, suppose that human artificial selection will fail as infrequently in the aggressive breeds as it does in the golden retriever. Van Den Berg found impulsive aggression in approximately one out of a hundred golden retrievers. If behavioral selection fails comparably often in fighting breeds, there is only a 1% chance that their keepers will not endanger others in their surroundings.
Can aggression be bred out?
Can impulsive aggressive behavior be bred out of fighting breeds?
The fiction that, for example, the American Staffordshire terrier is a different dog from the pit bull, just because the breeding has (also fictionally, by the way) been going on separately for several decades is just that: a fiction.
The Russian researcher Dmitry Kontanovich Beljaev reported that he had bred fear out of foxes in only eighteen generations, but impulsive aggression is a more complex response and much more dangerous to live with while you try to breed it out. Further, Belyaev’s foxes were bred under laboratory conditions, where there was absolute control over not having the wrong genes creep back in again.
[Alexandra Semyonova, a dog behaviorist and former Dutch SPCA inspector, is author of The 100 Silliest Things People Say About Dogs (Hastings Press, 2009.)]
[Alexandra Semyonova, a dog behaviorist and former Dutch SPCA inspector, is author of The 100 Silliest Things People Say About Dogs (Hastings Press, 2009.)]
As Belyaev bred his foxes into the petable creatures he wanted, they began to have an increasingly floppy-eared mutt exterior. Belyaev’s discoveries suggest that the interface of physical and behavioral conformation mean it is not possible to breed out the impulsive aggressive behavior of fighting dogs while retaining their shape and appearance.
Form follows function: one cannot have a dog whose entire body and brain are adapted to executing the killing bite, without having a dog who will execute the killing bite.
Voices of pit bull experience
Police dogs should be trained as officers, not equipment
Note: I apologise for posting such a long article, but I believe that you are a person who would understand and appreciate this, and did not want to just post an excerpt. The article and similar others can be found here:
https://www.animals24-7.org/2015/11/10/the-science-of-how-behavior-is-inherited-in-aggressive-dogs/
Note: I am aware and am now disclosing that for most purposes, the Merritts, as far as I understand, are not conservatives. Norski
Facts can be annoying
Don't bother flaming me. I won't read it. :-)
You are welcome. I seek to provide information.
The pit-bull-type dog attacks are escalating, as well as the number of
1) attacks by multiple dogs upon one or more persons, and also
2) one dog attacking multiple persons, as in this case.
Without intervention, the problem has and will continue to worsen.
Are there any specific aspects of the issue that interest you that I may provide information or links? Norski
Montreal had implemented it, and Quebec reversed it.
Fixed.
And it very well would have been a couple kids dead if it weren't for the efforts of the adults>
If it takes that many adults to protect kids from a dog, then the dog is a clear danger.
Pits are killing machines and when the switch flips to *ON*, game's over for anyone in their way.
Obviously someone has a greater agenda over the dogs than they do the welfare of people.
Surprise surprise...another pit bull-hating post by Norski.
Everything that could have gone wrong, did go wrong.
So, AFTER the dog had attacked a helpless baby TWICE,
the Grandmother saw the dog (un-muzzled) moving freely through the house and playing with toddlers.
And even THEN, she did nothing substantial about it.
First mistake was to bring those kids to Granny’s house at all and leave them under her supervision, knowing that the Grandmother managed a Foster Care type set up.
Blue Ribbon idiots, all of them!
I apologise; it appears that I should have included you in my post #25, and did not. Forgive me, please. Norski
BS.
The amount of restraint suggested for pits shows that it IS the breed.
Bad owners exacerbate it, but you cannot train a dog's inherent nature out of it.
Here’s my problem: I am not alone in assigning responsibility to dog owners & breeders. Neither am I alone in personal experience with dogs - including several breeds of Terrier (aka “pits) - which is a contradiction to cherry-picking the news - the SAME news everyone else here denigrates - to support a personal agenda.
Actually, when it comes down to brass tacks, it’s rather Conservative to do - assign personal responsibility - and just a bit hypocritical to dismiss the human factor.
Let’s just say that tomorrow all “pitbulls” were magically-erased from existence.
Result: We would still have breeders breeding dogs for the same reasons they were breeding pits, we would still have these aggressive dogs attacking people & children and we would still have injuries - and likely some deaths - due to the fact that we hysterically focused on one breed and absolved humans of any responsibility whatsoever.
The mistake people make in blindly assigning me as an “apologist” is that I support euthanizing dangerous/aggressive/mistreated dogs which cannot be safely managed by a professional far removed from people they might endanger.
But I do not support blindly eliminating a whole breed without addressing breeders, brokers (this includes the puppy mill supporters such as major big-box stores nationwide) and negligent/stupid humans who should never be permitted to own animals in the first place.
The grandmother was negligent, reckless and overwhelmingly responsible for the attack. Stupid, stupid woman.
It is hypocritical to address the canine factor while ignoring the human factor.
Frankly, at its core there many similarities between this “dog” debate and the gun control debate; it’s a bit shameful that more people here don’t see the hypocrisy of arguing against one but not the other.
The owner of the dog warned the Grandma, that this dog should wear a muzzle, 24/7.
Really? 24/7? That must be torturous for any dog, especially a dog less than two years old, still brimming with energy.
If that condition is needed, then obviously this particular dog is not suit to stay indoors at all unless it’s in a kennel.
Malevolence, and something almost wicked, in the behavior of the “grandmother” seems to be in the situation as well. This is my own opinion.
An interesting item is that fewer and fewer persons are being identified in news stories. The name of the 66 year old lady killed last week by pit bulls has still not been released, and http://www.courier-tribune.com/news/20180817/no-charges-no-id-yet-in-fatal-pit-bull-attackneither has the name of the owner of the dogs.
Really?
The gma didn’t make the decision to take home a dog which was recommended to be muzzled? She didn’t make multiple, consequent poor decisions which culminated in the results?
What is blinding you to the facts?
This was 100% preventable; she was reckless.
“Frankly, at its core there many similarities between this “dog” debate and the gun control debate; it’s a bit shameful that more people here don’t see the hypocrisy of arguing against one but not the other.”
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Please do not equate the discussion of dangerous dogs with firearms. Please stay on topic.
This is not about most dogs. This is about a particularly dangerous dog breed.
This is not about firearms, except as to defend one’s self against dangerous dogs, such as pit bulls, and the appropriate caliber and safety items.
Please do not call people hypocrites here.
Thank you, Norski
Did you actually read what I wrote or what you wanted me to say?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.