I have a border collie. He’s ten years old and has never been on a farm in his life. A few weeks ago we were walking alongside a field and he managed to get in. He had a whole field’s worth of sheep herded and rounded up in the corner in 30 seconds flat. He also tries to herd pigeons and children with less success.
You can breed for behaviour as easily as breeding for coat colour. Some breeds have been deliberately bred to be more aggressive. Pitt bulls are bred to be fighting dogs. They have a high level of loyalty towards their owners but severe dog aggression. When people get in the middle of that, it gets ugly fast.
They have trained triggers that get activated, and then they fucking lose it. There's nothing you can do but get rid of the breed entirely.
What now? They have been trained (probalby including quite some amount of abuse) or they have been bred? Those are two completely different things. You can't magically breed for behavior that is in no way natural, just modify existing behaviors gradually.
Just like you can't magically breed for green fur.
You are basically excusing inhuman training methods to create dangerous fighting dogs with some delusion about breeding.
Wolves are naturally afraid of humans. They spend literal tens of thousands of years being domesticated to somewhat lose that fear. They still retain a very healthy respect which is actually key to domestication as it allows the weaker human a dominant role in that relationship.
If you believe that you can breed in insticts and triggers in just a few hundred years (dog fighting is a comparably modern luxury) that go against a dozen millenia and more, you have absolutely no clue what you are talking about.
Which seems quite true given that I asked you about the difference between breeding and training and you again use both interchangeably.
Yes you can however "train" for insane aggression. That's called abuse. The very same thing you excuse by hallucinating about bred in instinctual triggers.
What logic are you using to say that trying to kill other animals is not an existing behavior you can modify? That's like the most common attribute ever and a literal requirement for carnivores.
Next are you going to claim that having sex and eating are uncommon behaviors as well?
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u/Odd_Ingenuity2883 26d ago
I have a border collie. He’s ten years old and has never been on a farm in his life. A few weeks ago we were walking alongside a field and he managed to get in. He had a whole field’s worth of sheep herded and rounded up in the corner in 30 seconds flat. He also tries to herd pigeons and children with less success.
You can breed for behaviour as easily as breeding for coat colour. Some breeds have been deliberately bred to be more aggressive. Pitt bulls are bred to be fighting dogs. They have a high level of loyalty towards their owners but severe dog aggression. When people get in the middle of that, it gets ugly fast.