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Humans have not merely been breeding dogs for tens of thousands of years (no-one really knows for sure how long) to make them have pleasing and useful physical characteristics, we've also bred them for certain temperaments and mental processes. Poodles and labradors love to play "fetch the ball" and "fetch the frisbie". That's because they're bred to be retrievers, to chase and bring back rabbits and ducks. (I'm not talking about toy poodles, who are so inbred to optimize small size that their brains have been damaged. Regulation poodles, which are about the same size as a Lab, are smart and well behaved and make excellent pets.) German Shepherds will quite often chase joggers or people on bicycles. They're herding dogs, and their job is to find animals who are trying to run away, to bring them back and to make them stop running. To a Shepherd, a jogger looks like a sheep trying to flee the flock. Terriers and dachshunds love to play "shake the rag", complete with violent head motions, pulling and low growls. That's because they are bred to hunt and kill rats. That action of getting the teeth strongly into something and then shaking the head violently is how they kill the rats they find. The shaking action breaks the rat's neck and back. Dachshunds, in particular, are bred to go into rat holes and kill the rats they find there. Their unusual body proportions are designed to give them maximum strength with minimum cross-section; a normally-proportioned dog which could fit into a rat hole (like a Chihuahua) wouldn't be strong enough to kill rats. But a Dachshund has the strength (and jaws!) of a dog three feet tall, while actually being much shorter. An adult Doberman will always be territorial. It knows its zone and doesn't let strangers into it. That's because Dobermans are bred to be guard dogs. These things are instinctive in these breeds. All dogs have all of these characteristics to some extent, but in these species individual behaviors have been emphasized by careful breeding. And the one thing which has been ruthlessly bred out of most dog breeds is any aggressiveness towards humans. Except in the case of things like Dobermans, any dog which attacks a human is killed immediately. Anyone who's studied natural and artificial selection knows how strong an effect this can have on a species. (The extreme example of this is golden retrievers, who are the most loving and friendly animals you could hope to find, not to mention being quite beautiful.) Why does it surprise anyone when a pit bull attacks and tries to kill something? It's what they are bred to do. Pit bulls were developed to be fighting animals for sporting events. Sometimes pit bulls would be put together into a fighting pit (hence the name) while men bet to see which one would kill the other. Or the equally humane sport bear baiting would involve chaining a bear in a pit, and putting several pit bulls in with it, while the men wagered on how many dogs would be killed before taking out the bear. These things are illegal in the US and most of the civilized world, but they still happen. And in any case, 200 years ago these were major sports. That is what a pit bull is bred to do: attack and kill things. And they haven't been bred to be gentle with humans, because doing that removes the fighting edge which was so favored by the breeders. Not every pit bull will spontaneously attack someone or something, but if you take a group of a thousand of them, you'll get a lot more attacks than you would from a thousand golden retrievers. The likelihood of this happening with a pit bull (or their close relatives the bull mastiffs, bred for the same thing) is sufficiently high that in my opinion the breed is too dangerous to keep. The way to prevent pit bull attacks is to not own a pit bull. (I hear that springer spaniels make excellent pets.) (growl) |
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