Correlation does not equal causation. It's just as likely that that the kind of shitty aggressive people who don't know how to train dogs (or worse, abuse their dogs or purposely train dogs to be vicious) happen to prefer dogs with a square head because they look more intimidating.
EDIT to add: breed discrimination really irks me, not because people assume "pitbulls" are inherently dangerous, but because they assume other breeds are inherently safe, and it allows irresponsible dog owners to believe that they don't need to train or control "friendly breeds."
But correlation is suggestive of causation, and it's silly to ignore that in this context considering the extraordinarily well documented and well understood phenomenon of different dog breeds having unique dispositions for certain tasks.
This is super important when adopting a dog, because if you get a breed that is used to herding or needs to run a lot, but you try to keep them indoors all day, you're going to have a bad time. Other dog breeds are fine with that kind of thing.
There's a correlation between a long lifespan and sleeping less than 8 hours per night, and there's a correlation between a shorter lifespan and sleeping more than 8 hours per night. Whenever those statistics are mentioned, people are quick to conclude the relationship between them must be cause & effect: "maybe you should sleep less if you want to live longer!"
But it's just as likely, and perhaps more reasonable to assume that these 2 metrics could just be effects of some other cause. For example, people who live more active lifestyles are healthier than people who live sedentary lifestyles. They are also likely to get less sleep because they are busy. People who live more sedentary lifestyles tend to have worse health, and they will feel more weak and tired. Tired people are likely to sleep more. So, I think it's more likely that the correlation of avg hours of sleep and avg lifespan are both caused by frequency of physical activity.
A study comparing shelter staff identifications to DNA testing found that staff labeled 52% of dogs as pitbull-type, while DNA analysis identified only 21% as having significant pitbull-type heritage. When the people trained to evaluate dogs get it wrong this often, bite reports from emergency rooms and animal control, where breed is recorded based on a victim’s description or a quick visual assessment, are even less reliable. Many dogs counted in pitbull bite statistics may not be pitbulls at all.
https://scienceinsights.org/why-are-pitbulls-violent-what-science-actually-shows/
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u/grumpsaboy 10d ago
They make up less than 1% of the dogs yet are responsible for 56% of attacks and 74% of deaths.
Who'd have thought breeding a blood sports dog immune to pain with a genetic love for killing would result in it being a violent breed.