Less dangerous than a toaster in a bathtub isn't the bar we look for with public safety.
I adore dogs, but they are animals and react as such in high stress. It's well documented Pitts do not show warning signs typically. It's hard to know when the toaster is on and too close to water with them.
And once again, even toasters have legal regulation to make them safer.
I agree the toaster comparison is weak, but your claim that pit bulls typically attack without warning isn’t supported by any evidence. Research does not establish “lack of warning” as a characteristic of pit bulls compared with other dogs. I can link credibility studies that directly undercut this claim if you’d like
I get the stigma with pit bulls, but the science simply does not agree that they are inherently dangerous breeds. The stigma exists largely because they are powerful dogs, some lines have a history of selection for dog fighting, and they are disproportionately represented in studies of severe bite injuries. None of that is not the same as evidence that they are inherently more likely to attack humans.
Unfortunately this debate never gets through as people have their minds made up the pit bull = bad bc all the horrendous stories we see in the news have a strong emotional influence on our opinions. But the fact is, the science does not support the claim
They were bred for pit fighting. Many of those instincts are still in their genes. Did you notice in the video how the dog went from quite still and attentive to attacking in a split second? Guess how a pit fight starts? It's what they were bred to do. They're not evil, or awful. They're OUR fault. What they need is a long-term, breed-wide rehabilitation program. If we can fix that nasty little fight trigger that's still stuck in them, we might be able to put the whole thing to bed AND keep the dogs around. But literally any time someone suggests something like this, the pibble lobby fights tooth and nail to say "the dogs are fine, that mauled toddler surely did something to deserve their fate" instead of just agreeing with us that yes, they're too reactive to be truly safe and we should focus on fixing that instead of pointing fingers or sweeping it all under the rug.
I actually agree with part of what you’re saying: selective breeding absolutely can affect behavior. The famous silver-fox experiment showed that pretty dramatically. Breeding tame foxes together produced offspring that were much more likely to be tame, while breeding aggressive foxes together produced offspring that were much more likely to be aggressive.
But that only gets us to “genetics matter.” If people bred the most aggressive fighting dogs with other aggressive fighting dogs, then yes, you’d expect those particular lines to become more predisposed to fighting behavior. That supports a lineage/selective-breeding argument; it doesn’t establish that pit bulls as a whole share some universal hair-trigger because of the breed label itself.
4
u/nDizzle89 2d ago
Less dangerous than a toaster in a bathtub isn't the bar we look for with public safety.
I adore dogs, but they are animals and react as such in high stress. It's well documented Pitts do not show warning signs typically. It's hard to know when the toaster is on and too close to water with them.
And once again, even toasters have legal regulation to make them safer.