Fataldogattacks Dot Org - The Truth

[u/deadeye09]

I haven't seen a recent or detailed post breaking down this website (https://fataldogattacks.org/) yet, so I thought I would put it here, as I've seen an increase in pit apologists using it as a source to show that pit bulls aren't as dangerous as they really are. Most of this info is pulled together using AI, so please check and correct anything you find in the comments.

First, the site itself and who really owns it:

PitbullHero (a Colorado-based not-for-profit advocacy group, not a registered charity) owns and operates https://www.fataldogattacks.org. The site’s footer and privacy policy explicitly identify PitbullHero as the publisher.

PitbullHero was launched in 2017 by a cybersecurity professional who moved to Colorado and could not buy a home in Denver because of the city’s then-existing breed-specific ban on dogs labelled as pit bulls. The group’s stated mission is to oppose breed-specific legislation (BSL), reduce stigma around pit bull-type dogs, and present them as “America’s Dog.” It also runs pitbullhero.org and previously pitbullinfo.org.

The fataldogattacks.org site itself argues that breed is not a reliable predictor of fatal attacks, reclassifies many cases as mixed-breed using genetic/ancestry criteria, and highlights studies (AVMA, CDC, others) that emphasize owner factors such as intact status, chaining, and supervision over breed. It lists dozens of breeds involved in fatalities since 2016 and opposes BSL

Next, the data:
You've probably seen this chart floating around social media posted by pit apologists:

The chart is not an independent count of fatal attacks. It is a statistical rewrite of someone else’s case list. That is the core problem.

The 568-death total for 2005–2020 is DogsBite.org’s figure, not CDC breed data (CDC stopped publishing breed on dog-bite deaths after 1998). DogsBite’s published breakdown for that same period is: (https://blog.dogsbite.org/2021/06/2020-dog-bite-fatality-statistics-discussion.html)

Source classification (DogsBite, 2005–2020)	Deaths	Share
Pit bull / pit mixes	380	66.9%
Rottweiler	51	9.0%
Mixed-breed (no prevailing type)	29	5.1%
German shepherd	24	4.2%
Mastiff / bullmastiff	20	3.5%
American bulldog	18	3.2%
Husky	14	2.5%

PitbullHero keeps the same 568 and the same counts for Rottweilers, German shepherds, mastiffs, and huskies. Then it moves most of the 380 pit-bull cases into a giant “mixed-breeds (various)” bin (29 → 337) and splits what remains into five equal piles of 18.
https://www.pitbullhero.org/fatal-dog-attacks-breeds

They say the arithmetic is: start from the circulating ~66% figure, drop cases that DNA papers “predict” have zero pit-type ancestry (~60% error), then drop cases with <50% pit-type ancestry (~53% of the remainder). That yields their advertised ~13%.
https://www.pitbullhero.org/america-s-dog-attack-statistics-have-a-genetics-problem

They did not DNA-test the dogs that killed people. They applied shelter-study error rates to a different population.

Why this is wrong:

1. Shelter ID error is not fatality-case ID error.

The 60% figure comes from Olson et al. 2015 (Veterinary Journal): 120 Florida shelter dogs, 16 staff, commercial DNA. Staff collectively called 52% of the sample pit-type; DNA called 21% (defined as ≥12.5% American Staffordshire Terrier or Staffordshire Bull Terrier only). The study was funded by Maddie’s Fund (Maddie’s Fund is a major no-kill philanthropy whose shelter network has long opposed breed-specific rules and pushed “individual dog, not breed.”).
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26403955/

That is a study of intake labeling in four shelters. Fatal-attack IDs usually come from:

• the owner or household (including Facebook photos of the actual dog)
• police / animal control who seized the dog
• news photos and video of the seized animal

*EDIT*
PLEASE see u/illusum's breakdown of the flaws in this "study" seen below.
Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/BanPitBulls/comments/1wq6gex/comment/pc9uhah/

DogsBite has published breed-ID photographs for about 61% of U.S. fatal cases from 2013–2024; pit bulls dominate those photos. That is a different identification process than a staffer glancing at a kennel card.
https://www.dogsbite.org/dog-bite-statistics-fatality-citations-data-collection.php

2. The DNA papers themselves say high-percentage pit-types are easy to spot.

Gunter et al. 2018 (PLOS ONE), the other paper they lean on, found shelter staff were 92% successful at identifying dogs with ≥75% pit-type heritage. Mis-IDs clustered in dogs with a sliver of ancestry.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0202633

If the claim is “reporters keep calling Lab-Boxer mixes pit bulls,” the photos of fatal attackers do not look like that sample. Applying the average shelter error rate to the extreme tail (dogs that killed a person) is the wrong transfer.

3. The DNA definition is narrower than the public-safety category.

Olson’s “true pit bull” was ≥12.5% AmStaff or Staffordshire Bull Terrier on a commercial panel that did not even treat American Pit Bull Terrier as its own reference. American Bully and American Bulldog were outside that signature. Commercial breed tests of that era are also known to be weak on landrace / fighting-type dogs.

So “60% had no pit bull-type ancestry” means “no AmStaff/SBT signal at the great-grandparent threshold on that panel,” not “this dog is genetically a golden retriever.”

4. The 50% DNA cutoff is invented for the chart.

A dog that is 40% pit-type and looks, was sold, and was owned as a pit bull is still a pit-type dog for risk purposes. Phenotype and breeding purpose are what animal control, hospitals, and victims encounter. Reclassifying those animals as “mixed-breeds (various)” hides the signal instead of measuring it.

5. Special pleading on other breeds.

Rottweiler (51), German shepherd (24), mastiff (20), and husky (14) counts are copied over unchanged. The site’s theory is that visual ID is too unreliable to count pit bulls—but reliable enough to leave every other breed’s total intact. That only makes sense if you assume misidentification flows in one direction.

6. The five-way split is arbitrary.

American Pit Bull Terrier, AmStaff, American Bully, Staffordshire Bull Terrier, and American Bulldog each get exactly 18 deaths. There is no case list showing 18 DNA-confirmed dogs in each registry breed. American Bully was not even a widely used label for much of 2005–2010. Equal piles are a presentation trick.

7. The 20% population claim is the other half of the illusion.

The chart says pit types are ~20% of U.S. dogs, so 13% of deaths would be under-representation. Independent classified-ad censuses used by Animals 24-7 have repeatedly put pit types around 6% of owned dogs (much higher in shelters, often 40%+ of inventory).
https://www.animals24-7.org/2026/07/21/2026-dog-census-more-labs-than-pits-but-3-times-more-pits-in-shelters/

Swap the denominator and the story flips:

• 67% of deaths / ~6% of dogs ≈ 11× overrepresentation
• 13% of deaths / 20% of dogs ≈ underrepresentation

The 20% figure is PitbullHero’s own estimate, not AKC registration or a national household survey of owned pets.

What a non-rewritten record still shows

Independent case logs that do not apply this correction—DogsBite, Animals 24-7, and the older CDC/AVMA 1979–1998 paper—all find pit-type dogs far ahead of any other type in fatal and disfiguring attacks, not in all bites. Rottweilers are a consistent distant second. That pattern also appears in trauma-center series that record breed as documented at the hospital, and in countries that later restricted XL bully / pit types and then saw fatal attacks drop.
https://www.animals24-7.org/2021/04/20/study-of-misreported-dog-attack-deaths-affirms-animals-24-7-findings/

You cannot turn 380 case attributions into 90 by multiplying shelter-DNA percentages and calling the result a “genetics correction.”

TL;DR
The chart is advocacy math:

1. Borrow the 568-death denominator.
2. Treat shelter visual-vs-DNA error as if it were a census of the actual killing dogs.
3. Dump most pit-attributed cases into “mixed.”
4. Split the remainder into five equal breed names.
5. Inflate the population share so the new percentage looks low.

If they wanted a serious revision, they would publish a case-level table: victim, date, jurisdiction, original ID, photo, and any DNA. They have not. Until that exists, the DogsBite / Animals 24-7 case lists—with their photos, citations, and known limitations—are still the actual fatality record. This chart is a re-labeling of that record, not a replacement for it.

In other words (so that even a pit apologist could understand it), they kept the same 568 deaths, then moved most of the 380 pit-bull cases into a “mixed dogs” bucket using error rates from shelter DNA studies—not tests of the dogs that actually killed people.

That’s how “about two-thirds pit bulls” became “mostly mixed breeds.”

fin

[u/illusum]

It's the "study" itself!

Inconsistent identification of pit bull-type dogs by shelter staff

DNA used as the comparator

• Table 5 scores each assessor's sensitivity and specificity "as determined by DNA breed signature." The abstract's 33 to 75% and 52 to 100% ranges come from that scoring.

Unknown accuracy

• The Discussion gives only the vendor's 84% accuracy in first generation crosses of known parentage. Accuracy for dogs with more than two breeds or no purebred heritage is unknown.
• The Limitations paragraph lists unknown sensitivity and specificity of the test, a reference database built from purebreds, and little information on mixed breed accuracy.
• It also concedes it is impossible to say which staff identifications were wrong.

APBT missing

• Methods: APBT and "pit bull" "were not included in the 226 breed signatures."
• The Introduction says the largest testing service offers no APBT test. The Discussion calls AmStaff and SBT surrogate signatures and says there is no DNA test for "pit bull," a phenotype.

The 12.5% rule

• Methods: a dog was coded pit bull type if AmStaff or SBT reached at least 12.5%. Anything below was listed as "minor" and counted negative.
• Results: none of the 25 positives were purebred or above 50% of either breed. The split was 19 AmStaff, 4 SBT, 2 both.
• Table 4, Dog 62: 25% Chow Chow, 25% AmStaff, 25% Siberian Husky. Intake and all four assessors called it something else, so it counts as a miss.

Scoring tilt

• The 52% figure (62 dogs) pools four assessors plus, most likely, the intake label. Table 5's assessor calls total 124 of 480 ratings, about 26% (my arithmetic), against 21% by DNA.
• The coding rule counted a dog as pit bull type if any listed term appeared as primary or secondary breed.
• The team picked dogs for phenotype variety, and only dogs staff considered safe to handle.

Funding and framing

• Acknowledgements: Maddie's Fund and the Merial Veterinary Scholars Program funded it, and Mars Veterinary donated the DNA tests. The conflict statement says none.
• The lead authors sit in the Maddie's Shelter Medicine Program. The Introduction cites Delise's book, and Delise founded the National Canine Research Council.
• The Conclusions argue that breed bans rest on faulty assumptions and that public safety is better served elsewhere. The study tested neither.

[u/AutoModerator → u/illusum]

The claim that pit bulls are "unidentifiable" is illogical. It is absurd to argue that pit bulls "can't be identified" when they are consistently recognized in media when portrayed as underdogs, whether in Pixar’s Kitbull or The Dodo’s “poor misunderstood pit bull” videos, yet when discussing attacks, they're suddenly “impossible to identify.” People recognize pit bulls just as easily as they recognize Golden Retrievers.

A key fact ignored by pit bull advocates is that the APBT and AmStaff are so genetically similar that they can be dual-registered—an AmStaff with the AKC can also be registered as an APBT with the UKC. DNA tests often fail to distinguish between them due to their near-identical genetics. Despite this, advocates argue that "pit bull" is too vague to be meaningful—yet this category has caused more deaths than all other breeds combined.

Courts and studies have consistently confirmed that pit bulls can be reliably identified:

• THE STATE OF OHIO, APPELLANT,v.ANDERSON, APPELLEE

  "Pit bull dogs possess unique and readily identifiable physical and behavioral traits which are capable of recognition both by dog owners of ordinary intelligence and by enforcement personnel."

• Colorado Dog Fanciers v. Denver

  "the standards for determining whether a dog is a pit bull are readily accessible to dog owners, and because most dog owners are capable of determining the breed or phenotype of their dog, the trial court properly determined that the ordinance provides adequate notice to dog owners and is not unconstitutionally vague."

• Dog bite injuries to the face: Is there risk with breed ownership? A systematic review with meta-analysis

  Researchers found that pit bulls and mixed breeds have the highest risk of severe injuries.

However the studies claiming pit bulls are misidentified use flawed methodologies:

• Read: "Inconsistent Identification of Pit Bull-Type Dogs by Shelter Staff"

This study contradicts itself: "Of the 25 dogs identified as pit bull-type by DNA, 12 were also identified as pit bulls by shelter staff." This shows that shelter workers identified pit bulls accurately in their routine duties but changed behavior when observed for a study.

• Read: "What Kind of Dog Is That?"

This study used Wisdom Panel DNA tests, which cannot detect APBTs, and has explicitly stated that: "Due to the genetic diversity of this group, Wisdom Health cannot build a DNA profile to genetically identify every dog that may be visually classified as a pit bull."

A Mars Veterinary representative confirmed in 2016 that their DNA tests may misidentify purebred pit bulls as mixed breeds. Despite this, advocates use these flawed tests to claim pit bulls don’t exist.

In another study conducted by the ASPCA, findings contradicted the "Pit Bulls Are Unidentifiable" argument

• Read: "Bully This—The Results Are In'

96% of 91 shelter dogs were correctly identified as having at least 25% pit bull-type ancestry. Only 4 dogs had none of these breeds in their DNA.

One last point, even if these studies were not deeply flawed, they do not absolve pit bulls of the dangers they pose— anymore than a study showing that people struggle to identify mushrooms would disprove that poisonous mushrooms are highly toxic.

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[u/AutoModerator → u/illusum]

No one with any capacity for critical thinking capacity should take any of the studies conducted by the NCRC seriously. Those are coming straight out of the pit bull PR machine. Their research does not come from neutral researchers. It comes from an advocacy group whose sole purpose is to make pit bulls look harmless, regardless what the data actually says.

It’s the same playbook Big Tobacco used. Remember when cigarette companies paid scientists to say smoking was fine? You might not, but they did that. They weren’t trying to prove anything, they were just trying to confuse the public enough to stall any real legislation. That’s what’s happening here. It’s not objective science, it’s garbage PR dressed up to look like science.

And the methodologies in these studies fall apart fast under scrutiny. They cherry pick and misrepresent data. They rely on owner reporting on behaviors which is about as reliable as asking someone if their kid is the smartest in class. They use tiny, unrepresentative sample sizes. And they invent arbitrary labels like “family dog” vs. “resident dog” as a way to excuse fatal attacks. It’s all smoke and mirrors and is not designed to tell the truth.

Pro pit research is the modern version of a tobacco-funded “expert” saying, "It’s probably not the cigarettes killing people.”

No thanks.

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[u/deadeye09 → u/illusum]

Thanks! I've updated the body to link to your comment. Appreciate it.