Work challenges popular idea that breeds have specific, reliable behaviors:
When Kathleen Morrill was 12, she decided she needed a puppy. [...] And so, the family ended up with its first dog—a 2-month-old pup she named Tod.
Tod was registered with the American Kennel Club (AKC), whose website describes his breed as "curious" and "friendly" with a "hardy constitution." But the puppy was shy and scared of strangers, and he developed separation anxiety as he aged. [...] "Breed can be important," Morrill says, "but it's not the full picture of a dog's behavior."
Now, she has the science to back that up. In a new study, Morrill and her colleagues show that almost none of the behaviors we associate with dog breeds—from lovable Labradors to pugnacious pit bulls—are hard-wired. Aside from a few ancient traits, environment seems to play a much larger role than pedigree.
[...] In the largest study of its kind, the team compared the genetic and survey data of nearly 2000 dogs—most of which had their entire genomes sequenced—and survey results from an additional 16,000 pooches. The pups included mixes and purebreds, with 128 breeds represented.
When it came to physical traits, such as size and floppy ears, genes ruled. At least 80% of a dog's appearance can be tied to its DNA, the team found.
[...] Behavior was another story. Less than one-quarter of the differences in personality from dog to dog could be explained by genetics. [...]
[...] And when it came to dog breeds, personality varied widely within the same pedigree.
[...] The bottom line, she says: If you're looking for a dog with a specific personality, "you shouldn't shop out of a catalog. Each dog is an individual."
Still, after decades of treating, showing, and judging countless breeds, AKC's chief veterinary officer, Jerry Klein, disputes the study's conclusions. "I think most dogs conform to the personality standard of their breed," he says. Purportedly older breeds, he says, such as Tibetan mastiffs and basenjis—few of which were enrolled in the study—may have more hardwired personalities because they've been around longer.
Klein also contends that if the researchers look beyond breed to classes of dogs—such as sporting dogs (which include a variety of spaniels) and scent hounds (such as basset hounds and beagles)—they would find their behaviors are more similar to each other than they are to other dogs. "It's not as simple as just the breeds."
For the reading-averse, there is also a nice YouTube summary of the research.
Journal Reference:
Kathleen Morrill et al., Ancestry-inclusive dog genomics challenges popular breed stereotypes, Science, 376, 2022
DOI: 10.1126/science.abk0639
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 19 2022, @01:14AM (4 children)
Mutts are the best "breed."
Although... I've never heard of retrievers mauling old ladies or their pomeranians...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 19 2022, @01:38AM (1 child)
The don't maul them, they just drag them home.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 19 2022, @01:46AM
And maul them with licks - germ warfare tactic.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday May 19 2022, @05:37PM (1 child)
Agreed on the mutts!
My guy is 17 human years and still running circles around me and I attribute at least some of that that to strong mixed genes.
(I do seem to recall the retrievers can be a bit bitey but I do ascribe to the nurture more than the nature in determining behavior school of though)
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday May 19 2022, @05:41PM
Meanwhile over in pure-bred land....
Pugs cannot be considered "a typical dog" due to dire health issues, study finds [cbsnews.com]
It's getting hard to not consider this animal abuse.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Thursday May 19 2022, @01:16AM (15 children)
It's possible that breed doesn't determine personality. But, I'll stick with my shepard dogs. Their traits and characteristics are pretty universal. Those traits and characteristics lead me to trust them with anything, including the lives of my children and grandchildren. Other people can trust their doberman, their pit bull, their silly lapdogs, or whatever. Shepards were all bred to be gentle, loyal, caring, and defensive. They will protect your little one from a bear, mountain lion, or stray dog, or even a home invader, reliably. And, when the battle is over, your shepard will lie down, and wash the child's face, and comfort the kid. Other dogs - maybe.
I can't ever trust a breed that was bred as an attack dog. Even less if the dog was trained to be aggressive. No aggressive dogs or breeds are welcome in my home. Ever.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 19 2022, @01:43AM (6 children)
What about German shepherds? They are used as police attack dogs. They are not border collies.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday May 19 2022, @01:56AM (4 children)
German shepards are kinda special. They are shepards. In my experience, German shepards that haven't been trained as attack dogs remain true to shepard characteristics. If they've been trained to be aggressive, they aren't much good to me. With or without attack training, I'll concede that German shepards are going to be a notch higher on the defensive scale than most other shepards. That is, he's not likely to allow any stranger to approach his master, unless master says it's alright. Other shepards, like my current Australian shepards, are more accepting of strangers than the German shepard.
Note that 'attack dog training' applies to professional and non-professional training. Any idiot can make a dog mean by mistreating it, while claiming that he's 'training' it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 19 2022, @02:02AM (1 child)
You've got an aus shepherd? Half dingo? I give you two thumbs up.
My neighbor got a bulldog pup a while ago, and I never knew how affectionate and friendly bulldogs can be, even with all that drooling.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Thursday May 19 2022, @03:16AM
Sorry, but no dingo genes. The Australian shepard is no more Australian than I am. They are as apple pie.
https://www.australian-shepherd-lovers.com/history-aussie-shepherd.html [australian-shepherd-lovers.com]
When I first met them, with one blue eye and one brown eye, I went along with the Australian bit. I mean, they're kinda alien, strange looking, like almost everything Australian. But, nope. No dingos involved at all.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 19 2022, @02:14PM (1 child)
German shepherds are not used as shepherds anywhere I know of. They tend to attack the sheep more than you would want for a dog that is supposed to be guarding them. They have been a police or military dog for as long as I can tell. This makes good use of their intelligence and agression.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday May 19 2022, @04:59PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AISwF8c1Cmw [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CC_v3ywUOQQ [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RgulI_ev2Y [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wFjI2WRJfU [youtube.com]
I watched a video a year or two ago, made on a real working ranch (as opposed to these demonstrations). The owners worked GS and border collies, exclusively. Among their reasons, the GS have stamina to equal the border collies, but they are supposedly better at defending against predators.
Sorry, I'm not finding that video in my searches, I'd like to link to it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 19 2022, @01:59AM
Sometime last century I was a teenager and delivered the afternoon newspaper. Leash laws were either non-existent or not enforced back then. The only dog that ever bit me was a purebred German Shepherd female, it was always acting threatening and once I let it get too close. The filthy rich owners of course "couldn't believe their sweet dog would bite anyone".
I got on fine with all the other dogs, mutts were the best.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 19 2022, @02:00AM
Unless, of course, Runaway is going to the Doctor's Office. Then it's "Sic 'em, Blue!"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Michael on Thursday May 19 2022, @03:20AM (4 children)
Dogs have been bred to conform to and integrate with their social group much longer than they've been bred for specific behavioural ranges. Longer than they've been dogs in fact. Disapproval or rejection by the social group as a whole, or the higher parts of the hierarchy especially is catastrophic to any dog's ability to function, and they'll do anything to avoid it.
Thinking that a particular breed behaves a particular way (insofar as the animal is capable of detecting that) is 99% of how it behaves. The dog is reading your expectations and reactions. Classic example of self-fulfilling prejudice.
Every one of the four sheep dogs I've known has been frantically nervous around strangers, untrustworthy with children, disobedient and prone to bite and piss inside. That's not because of the breed, it's because all four of them were owned by the same people, who chose that breed purely based on appearance. They didn't know how to train them, or integrate them into the group, or communicate with them, or provide an appropriate social structure, or understand what a dog fundamentally is.
They were never cruel, but their internal model of what a dog is was just so radically different to reality they effectively drove each of them insane.
Sure, different breeds have slightly different emotional and cognitive ranges and defaults, but all of them overlap (and extend well beyond to either side) what is generally considered acceptable. Given appropriate instruction, breed is basically irrelevant.
Every one of the half dozen 'dangerous' breeds I've known has been no problem at all. Even the one which had been rescued from an unsuitable situation - a bull terrier previously owned by adolescent males who neglected and teased it until it started attacking them, then tried to drown it in the canal. Within about a week of being in a social environment which made sense to it, and having clearly communicated expectations and a clear hierarchy it was a perfectly fine and respectful creature.
I wouldn't say it had first rate intelligence - possibly there was some brain damage from the attempted drowning - but even so it quickly internalised a set of acceptable behavioural ranges for each family member and for human beings in general.
Dogs are naturally experts at that. Certainly better than many humans.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by helel on Thursday May 19 2022, @01:31PM (1 child)
Dogs very much respond to human expectation. Often it's conditioned response but dogs are also smart enough to play the people around them. There was one woman I knew who had a pit bull that would go absolutely crazy barking and "growling" anytime anyone came near her home. She'd always have to drag him back to her room when company came by and she always apologized that he was so aggressive and protective and to be fair I'm sure he'd have taken a bullet for her if called to but...
I know dogs well enough to tell that this little guy wasn't the least bit mad when people came over. It was all a show. Any time I happened by the house and she wasn't home the dog never barked nor growled. Instead he'd leap up on me, trying to lick me and and play. His entire "aggressive" demeanor was an act for my friend and one he did so successfully she strait up never believed me when I tried to tell her how he behaved when she wasn't around.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 20 2022, @04:15AM
This was an important point in the movie My Dog Tulip. [imdb.com] The main character lives in an apartment and adopts a dog. The dog barks a lot so the owner took the dog to a vet/behavioralist who determined that it was not actually the dog's fault. The dog was reacting to the social environment and the desire to protect her pack, but not overly concerned about her own safety. I.E. it dropped its guard without the owner around, calmed down, and became quiet and friendly.
Removing the owner from the evaluation was the only way to see the dog's "neutral" social behaviors. The owner might never have been able to figure it out on their own.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 19 2022, @06:15PM (1 child)
"a bull terrier previously owned by adolescent males who neglected and teased it until it started attacking them, then tried to drown it in the canal."
"adolescent males"? i think you mean Niggers, motherfucker.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 19 2022, @06:19PM
maybe Bean Niggers...
(Score: 2) by Username on Thursday May 19 2022, @02:14PM (1 child)
IMHO large or strong dog breeds should be on gun registries and treated as one. Police find that dog roaming free, owner gets charged with brandishing/discharging etc
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Thursday May 19 2022, @10:17PM
Large dog breeds tend to be more mellow. It's the little ones that nip, like Chihuahuas.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday May 19 2022, @02:02AM (4 children)
How exactly is this news? I mean, it's been well recognized basically forever than severely abused dogs of all breeds can be vicious killers or meek cowards, depending on the nature of the abuse. Clearly their personalities are not irrevocably factory-stamped at conception.
I can't think of any argument that would assert that the whole Nature-versus-Nurture argument would come down any differently for any other higher animal than it does for humans - and identical twin studies have nailed that down pretty firmly at a roughly 50-50 mix.
I have to disagree about their claim that less than 25% of traits are genetic though - at least not without a whole lot of twin/clone studies to back it up, which I see no mention of. They seem to be equating "based in genetics" with "common to the breed", a position that's wholly untenable given the immense amount of genetic variation present even in the most severely inbred of breeds.
Unless you're dealing with identical twins (or clones), there's going to be a lot of variation in the ~50% of personality we would expect to be determined by genetics. A 25% level of similarity within a breed is actually pretty astounding - suggesting offhand that roughly 50% of the personality-influencing genes are shared within a breed. That some very impressive genetic selection for traits that are far less obvious that physical ones, and so heavily influenced by upbringing.
(Score: 2) by Michael on Thursday May 19 2022, @03:38AM (1 child)
Don't necessarily need careful selection to get that level of uniformity if they're inbred enough.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday May 19 2022, @04:21PM
You sure about that? I mean, if a woman could somehow "self-pollinate" you'd be dealing with 100% inbred offspring, and yet it's vanishingly unlikely (though not strictly impossible) that any of her offspring would be clones of her - in fact they'd demonstrate almost as much genetic variation as they would with any traditional pairing, simply because of the way genetic material is randomly sampled for each gamete.
E.g. if she had the Aa gene-pair for some trait, half her self-pollinated offspring would be Aa, 1/4 would be AA, and 1/4 would be aa - exactly as if she had mated with a male who also possessed an Aa gene-pair.
Of course most traits are more complex than that - with more than just two variations, and often influenced by more than just one gene-pair. Of course a single individual can only have two variants of a particular gene (or one, if they inherited the same variant from both parents, - e.g. AA or aa) - but since most observable traits are influenced by many different genes, you're still going to get a whole lot of variety unless all the associated genes are also ones which the parent has duplicates of.
And it's very unlikely that most (much less all) defining traits of a breed would just happen to be associated with doubled-genes rather than a particular combination of variants.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 19 2022, @12:41PM
I haven't read the paper to see how they got that 25% number, but they were sequencing the genomes of the dogs individually and pairing them with the behavior questionnaires, so they were able to compare different behavioral traits to the genetic sequences within the same breed.
These results might not surprise you, but I think it might be news to a lot of people. There are no end of resources, including from the AKC, that will recommend specific breeds to people who are looking for ill defined traits (e.g., "good with kids"), and of course owners of pit bulls have been legally defending their breed for decades against bans.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 19 2022, @06:22PM
this is just Jew propaganda to try and discredit the concept of race to further their on going global White Genocide.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 19 2022, @02:33AM (14 children)
Pitbulls are 20 percent of the dog population and 65 percent of attacks. Followed by rottweiler and then German shepherds.
While the vast majority of dogs have no decernable difference between breeds the three mentioned above are exhibit different personalities than the rest. If you go read through the list of dog attacks going back a century in the US Pitbulls stand out because they can be the perfect family dog until they snap and eat your kids. Rots are aggressive in general. And German shepherds (particularly police dogs) do aggression for a living and have a penchant for getting nippy in their old age due to confusion.
Retrievers, Collies, etc have deaths that are more often due to overexcitement and tragging than attacking. One that stood out for me was a golden that killed a baby when the parents left an unattended baby crying for hours and the dog crushed its head while trying to carry it to its owners.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 19 2022, @02:54AM (1 child)
Better phrased, the goldie tried to save the human baby, but carrying the baby by the neck, like she would with puppies, ended up fatal.
The dog is a hero, the parents should have gone to jail.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 19 2022, @03:18AM
That story made me sad. 😢
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Thursday May 19 2022, @03:05AM (6 children)
Are they really though? Or are attacks from other breeds just not reported as often? I mean, very few people are going to bother reporting being attacked by a chihuahua, despite the fact that those little bastards can be downright vicious, and are probably responsible for a huge percentage of total dog attacks. It's just that most attacks end with them being kicked across the room by the angry/amused victim with no serious harm done.
I'm generally opposed to allowing people to own fighting breeds (at least not without insurance, owner training, and a deadly animal ownership license proving it), not because they're particularly vicious breeds, but because they're bred specifically to have powerful jaws and well-honed instincts for killing large animals. Which means if they do attack, they're going to do a LOT more damage than most breeds would.
It's like giving a toddler a handgun - it's no black mark on the toddler if they shoot someone, the fault clearly lies with the person who gave them the gun. Fighting dogs are in much the same boat - like any dog their intellect and emotional maturity are comparable to a toddler's - but the "gun" was bred into them from birth, so there's just no reliably safe way to let them be part of normal society.
(Score: 2) by Spamalope on Thursday May 19 2022, @03:21AM
Selective breeding matters. In other breeds individuals who displayed inappropriate aggression were culled. The baseline temperament is different.
(Score: 2) by Michael on Thursday May 19 2022, @03:35AM
Personally I think the similarity between dogs and guns is more that they're both dangerous if you give them to idiots or maniacs who only want them for stupid or dangerous reasons.
If poodles somehow got a reputation for being ideal as a criminal / paranoic / incel weapon of choice they'd be over-represented in the dog bite figures too.
Though, as you say, jaw strength becomes relevant once they do bite.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 19 2022, @02:11PM (3 children)
If other dog breeds are not reported it's because those dogs bite or nip whereas pitbulls attackand keep on attacking! A pitbull attacks with the intention of ripping your throat out, tearing off your face, and breaking through your rips until it's torn into your chest cavity and you are dead. Pitbulls have killed full grown horses!
Most other dogs will bite and let go as a warning to back off and leave it alone or else. Most times the bite wont even break the skin or even hurt or leave a mark. They aren't biting you with the intention of ripping you apart into tiny pieces. So of course pitbulls are reported more because an attack by a pitbull is an attack on someone life!
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday May 19 2022, @04:36PM (2 children)
Exactly.
It says nothing about the general temperament of the dog - only about the expected outcome if/when it is triggered to attack.
They were bred to be (semi-)autonomous weapons, and since there's no way to remove the weapon from the dog, they must be treated as such. No matter how sweet tempered they may be under normal circumstances, they simply do not have the intellect, emotional self-control, or understanding of the larger context to be trusted not to attack except when the expected outcome is justified by human standards.
Not to mention you're talking about an animal that, left to it's own devices, would normally roam many miles per day across a large territory seeking food and entertainment while sharing companionship with its like-minded pack - but is instead locked up in a tiny house or yard with a tiny pack, most or all of whom are very alien beings. Being imprisoned like that is likely to warp the mind of even the most even-tempered individual in unpredictable ways.
(Score: 2) by bmimatt on Thursday May 19 2022, @08:01PM
This. Also, not all people are fit to be dog owners and lots of them are clueless what it takes and how to go about allowing the animal to fit well into their household.
It sickens me when I run into people with completely warped or nonexistent understanding of what responsibilities they have as dog owners.
There a lot of people who do not have basic understanding of dog's needs, like consistency of owner behavior towards the dog, being a fair pack leader to the dog (or even understanding that to the dog they're in a pack), regular physical and mental exercise for certain breed.
A tired dog is a good dog - applies to all larger breeds and most others that are not genetically fit for heavy exercise.
Having a husky/shepherd/pitbull when you live in a single bedroom on 7-th floor and spend 14 hours a day at the office is just not going to be a good environment for the dog. Unless you commit 1-1.5 h per day to getting that dog tired.
Is your dog destroying your house or belongings or otherwise 'acting up'?
Get that dog basic obedience training, enough exercise and be a fair leader (i.e. do not expect the dog to be a mind reader if you don't give it proper training). Positive reinforcement is very powerful tool.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 19 2022, @11:22PM
The "pit" part of a pit bulldog refers to an actual pit, into which two dogs were thrown, to fight until one of them was dead. Bloodsport, like cock fighting. Dog-fighting is illegal in all civilized nations. Time for the breed to die out. If you need illustration, I recommend Le Pacte des loups [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday May 19 2022, @03:26AM (3 children)
Allow me to point out:
For years, decades even, German shepards were blamed for more attacks than any other breed. However, very, very, very few such attacks were ever fatal.
Rotties and pitbulls took over first place for the number of attacks. The alarming difference is, both are more likely to kill the victim. The German shepard will usually go for an extremity, unless he's been trained to go for the throat of the groin. Those other two tend to go for the throat or the face. If you're not killed, you'll probably be maimed and disfigured after being mauled.
Given any choice in the matter, I would rather be attacked by a German shepard than either a rottweiler or most any bulldog.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 19 2022, @06:05AM (1 child)
Strangely correlant, then, with RWNJs, who stand their ground in order to kill, as apposed to normal Americans, who are not packing heat at all. Hmm. Sometimes correlation is causation? Or at least a reliable predictor of attempted coups by storming the Capitol Building to overthrow the Constitution.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 19 2022, @01:18PM
Most people killed by guns (not counting suicide) were killed by a criminal robbing or assaulting them. Very disproportionately, these are not clean cut Republican attackers. They are People of Color who if they vote at all vote Democrat. Simple fact. And of the POCs, they are overwhelmingly black attackers. The victims also are overwhelmingly black.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 19 2022, @11:14PM
No. Shut up, Runaway.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 19 2022, @06:34PM
i agree that breed matters but
"because they can be the perfect family dog until they snap and eat your kids"
is ignorant nonsense. Some idiotic bitches shouldn't have a dog like a pit bull.
(Score: 2) by Spamalope on Thursday May 19 2022, @03:33AM (5 children)
Selective breeding matters. The Australian shepherds I've met and the one I lived with literally tried to herd *everything*. Retrievers want to fetch all the time. Many breeds have pronounced personality predilections in addition to physical traits. Individuality isn't erased, but there is strong weighting. Good luck getting a Great Dane to bring back the ball a Goldie will fetch all day....
WTF are these folks smoking? "Less than one-quarter of the differences in personality from dog to dog could be explained by genetics." Your genetics are incompletely understood. Why are they assuming that current tech encompasses all the relevant heritable traits? That's completely unfounded...
(Score: 2) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Thursday May 19 2022, @05:45AM
Anecdotal, but compelling.
Someone I used to work with had two brand new puppies and before collaring them, left the collars on the floor for the dogs to sniff and get used to.
The collie circled it and barked at it.
The retriever picked it up and brought it back to her.
That's behavior, not personality, true. But every golden I've known has had a similar personality.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 19 2022, @08:43AM (3 children)
They're idiots or just need to publish some crap to keep their jobs. Or the journalists needed a bait headline. In my experience a lot of those tiny dogs are very yappy. Whereas more of those big dogs don't go around yapping like mad. There are exceptions of course e.g. huskies - apparently they are very vocal and noisy.
The domesticated silver fox and aggressive silver fox experiments and similar have proven that tameness and aggressiveness can be bred and there are genetic components.
As for dogs if the differences are less than 25% but say aggression can be 5% or more it still can make a big frigging difference in practice. More people are able to laugh off bites from small dogs whereas most people ain't laughing after they get bitten by a big dog. And small dogs might be less inclined to seriously bite humans due to the size difference (it takes a lot more - guts, unhappiness, aggressiveness, craziness, etc to attack something many times bigger). So even if a big dog is 5% more aggressive than a small dog, there are other factors that add up to make the results more significant - size, speed, strength, bite strength, jaw shape.
Lastly if you're a normal sized adult human male and are somehow savaged and badly defeated by a chihuahua you might be too embarrassed to report it... Might say you got involved in a barfight or something. ;)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 19 2022, @01:21PM (2 children)
They say humans and chimps share 98% of their DNA. Does that mean there is basically no difference between a man and a chimp?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 19 2022, @06:40PM (1 child)
less difference with Negroids who have a cornucopia of archaic admixture.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 19 2022, @06:43PM
totally not a gorilla! Your eyes are racists! (just like nature)
https://www.essence.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/8D042442-7D6B-4512-BD2E-EF131E22D749.jpeg [essence.com]
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Thursday May 19 2022, @07:06AM (1 child)
1. Breed genetics
2. Individual genetics
3. Environment
How does the author manage to skip over #2? Seriously? It's blindingly obvious from some of the examples they list, like supposedly trainable German Shephards sometimes being "impossibly headstrong". That's not environment, that's individual genetic variation.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 19 2022, @01:44PM
Plenty of evidence the breed CAN determine the personality:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox [wikipedia.org]
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1800889115 [pnas.org]
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/fox-dogs-wild-tame-genetics-study-news [nationalgeographic.com]
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/25/health/25rats.html [nytimes.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 19 2022, @12:48PM
is the owner`s personality.
Many people like to use their pets to do things that can not be done by law, like allowing the pet to shit on others` property, allowing them to attack other pets or people and then blame it on the dog.
Ya you know who you are, hiding behind your pet to enact violent motives and enjoying it.
If your dog can be incited to hurt others or has an aggressive personality, then like you, it should never be allowed in public, period.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 19 2022, @02:29PM
I bet it came from the "Kind, Intelligent, Loveable, Likeable, Enlightened, Respectable, Sweeties" (aka KILLERS) pit bull breeders of America?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 19 2022, @07:18PM
TFA says the study is based on a database of owners surveyed for the behavior. "Of course my sweetie is nice", systemic error.