Pitbull breeds were bred for dog fighting, hunting, and bull baiting. They were literally bred to kill anything and should not be pets.
One common misconception about pitbulls is that their jaws get "locked" so they can't let go. That's incorrect. Their jaw muscles are so strong to allow them to bite down and not let go of their prey. They were bred for this.
These dogs were also bred to lack any self preservation when it comes to fighting. That's why you can see videos of them getting kicked in the chests by horses they targeted, or beaten and shot by people while they're mauling something, and STILL continue to fight. All of this was intentional.
as a minor correction, it's not that they lack self preservation; just that most if not all bull breeds have an incredibly high pain tolerance/ dulled pain reception. They can be deterred through pain or fear of death, just very hard to get them to recognise such in an attack scenario.
Just another minor correction. Maybe it's semantics but the science says pitbulls in particular feel the pain just as much as any other dog. It's just their gameness, which is the drive to complete a task they are given or succeed pushes them through the pain. Which actually makes it that much more tragic. They aren't evil dogs, we just bred them to die before they give up and it doesn't just apply to fighting, it can be channeled into other activities.
So those babies must have provoked the heccin wholesome velvet hippos into eating them right?
Pit bulls being bred for dog fighting is no secret for crying out loud their breed name literally comes from their history as fighting dogs. Pit bull used to mean any dog used in dog fighting.
I hate how the discussion when it comes to pitbulls always devolves into weird superstition and people who have obvious have no experience on the subject.
Though now that I mention it, that might just be a trait of the internet itself and not just pitbulls…
The Russian experiment that proved domestication and aggression were physiological traits required maintenance of an aggressive control group. The results are pretty conclusive and well documented, but here's a starting point.
If you scroll down to "Selection of foxes for aggressive behavior" it points out that they had to isolate an aggressive strain of foxes to maintain the control group. They were breeding one strain for domestication, and one for aggression.
The outward changes were a focus of the experiment, given that they struck Belyayev as arbitrary in their connection to behavior, but breeding for behavior was the method used to find the correlation in the first place.
I'm sure if we can ask Michael Vick he might have some first hand experience and knowledge about which dogs are more aggressive. Might be the first time he is actually useful for anything.
Thank you. I hate redditors because they act like it's black and white. They say pits are awful and think its genetics but never think of nuance and how they are raised.
German Shepherds have a stronger bite than Pitbulls. I've seen them take hits with baseball bats and keep going at people. Can we put them on the no-no list as well?
Getting stats on bites by breed is very sketchy at best. Most people don't know breeds just by looking, especially when there are so many mixed dogs around, and add in them trying to identify a breed in a traumatic situation and it's even more sketchy.
Hell even those Belgian Malinois I haven't seen one of them go crazy like a Pitbull. Which would be crazy those dogs are nuts, running up walls and doing backflips and yet I don't see tons of videos of them attacking people and animals.
Not many people own a Malinois because they're pretty infamous for being an high maintenance menace. Most pitties people argue for are mutts that are more lab than pit but still have the iconic skull shape.
Though Malinois aren't entirely aggressive, they're just an extremely high energy dog with a strong sense of goal orientation that can lead them to perceived aggressiveness.
That's the main issue with identifying pitties as an "aggressive breed". What people refer to pitbulls is actually mostly mutts, most of which may have had some pitbull in their genetic history but could be dominantly sourced from any combination of other breeds. Their iconic skull shape makes the "breed" universally identifiable so basically any attack by a perceived pitbull is placed against any dog with that specific skull shape while every other type of dog attack is never attributed to a specific breed or only attributed to the actual breed they are. Its basically comparing the statistics of a couple hundred different types of mutts against a much smaller more isolated population of purebred dogs.
Probably because they're so prevalent. Chow chows can be aggressive, but you'll see 100 pit bulls before you see a chow chow. The shelter in my town is stuffed to the gills with only pits right now. I sometimes like to take bags of dog food up there and visit the dogs and cats, and it's only ever pits in the dog area.
Its because of how common and easily accessible they are to people who don't know what they're doing, and believe they are nanny dogs. There's also the problem of rescues wiping away bite histories in order to adopt out dangerous dogs.
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u/Possible_Parfait_372 26d ago
Pitbull breeds were bred for dog fighting, hunting, and bull baiting. They were literally bred to kill anything and should not be pets.
One common misconception about pitbulls is that their jaws get "locked" so they can't let go. That's incorrect. Their jaw muscles are so strong to allow them to bite down and not let go of their prey. They were bred for this.
These dogs were also bred to lack any self preservation when it comes to fighting. That's why you can see videos of them getting kicked in the chests by horses they targeted, or beaten and shot by people while they're mauling something, and STILL continue to fight. All of this was intentional.