First, Indygrrl, I apologize for basically causing this huge nasty hijack. Say the word, and I’ll start a new thread for this discussion; I was having a bad day last Friday, and lissener’s comment just set me off. Again, I apologize, and am happy to move the discussion (or at least move my part of it) if you’d like.
Second, Cerri, I agree completely with the above paragraph. Certainly genetics form part of a dog’s behavior, and certainly these genetics sometimes correspond roughly to the physical characteristics found in breeds; however, like you say, nurture is usually more important.
There are extreme cases, of course, and dogfighters often do their best to bring about extreme cases by engaging in serious and prolonged inbreeding in order to cultivate hereditary mental disorders. But in everything I’ve seen, these extreme cases are the exception rather than the rule.
Oh, absolutely. These dogs are also generally never socialized to humans, let alone dogs (obviously), rarely, if ever shown affection, and are, in fact, trained to attack any dog on sight.
It’s just such a shame several wonderful breeds have had their reputations ruined because of people like this. I absolutely detest breed-specific laws, they are just so very wrong.
I remember a few years back, Buffalo Grove, the suburb I grew up in, tried to pass a breed-specific law banning/and or restricting IIRC, Rottweilers, Dobermans, Pit Bulls, and possibly German Shepards, though I do not recall exactly, and I did not follow the case to see it’s conclusion, as I’d moved out of area. (Though I’ve just checked, and apparently they only passed restrictions on pit bulls, though I do not have the specifics of those restrictions).
But what was the breed with the highest number of recorded dog bite cases in the surrounding area? Cocker Spaniels.
There are NO bad breeds. There are bad owners, and dogs who have been taught to be bad dogs.
Some information on breed-specific laws around the US:
…and, rarely, dogs bred into psychosis. Like I said, we had puppies at the Humane Society that, without any training, began exhibiting murderous rage toward one another once they were a few months old; other than these puppies from a dogfighter case, I’ve never seen similar rage in puppies.
But yeah, it’s not a trait common to all pit bulls by any stretch of the imagination.
I arrive at my position through a lifetime of reading, much of it on behavioral sciences (after reading one behavioral book, when I was twelve, I taught a guppy to jump over a matchstick); a shitload on evolution; and trying to keep up with the state of science, specifically the biological sciences. (When I worked for a doctor for two years, a couple years ago, I snuck subscriptions to Nature and Science into his budget and read them on my lunch hour.) I’m a lifelong animal geek: I’ve had as many 64 different animals in my apartment at one time; I worked in a petstore–the only employee who could work with equal expertise in the bird room, the fish room, the dog room, and the cat room–for almost 10 years; I owned my own aquarium design and maintenance company for eight years, during which time I also took on freelance dogtraining clients: I’ve trained about 120ish dogs. All my own personal anecdotal experience supports what I’ve learned from a lifetime of scientific reading, specifically the consensus of the vast majority of the scientific community that sociobiology is an interesting theory, but is far from being proven: that behaviors across races/breeds, as opposed to related individuals, is–so far as I have read or seen or experienced–almost always supported entirely by anecdotal evidence and has never yet been convincingly proven; that the invalidity of sociobiology holds the status of scientific orthodoxy, and so the burden is on *you * and your fellow sociobiologists to prove differently.
Ever since this thread went off track, I’ve been thinking about a couple examples I remembered from my old biology classes… the fish that would attack anything that was red on the bottom- even things remarkably not-fish shaped… the two types of birds that would tuck strips of nest building material- though of different lengths and in different locations, that when interbred yeilded a hybrid that chose intermediate length material and attempted an unsuccessful tucking behaviour… geese rolling doorknobs into their nests because they look like eggs.
Then I found this page. I think it will help by providing many examples (including the three mentioned above) as well as providing a source for more precise terminology. It’s not very heavy on scientific citation or source material, though. I’m sure folks can find hard references is they’re needed.
To get to a question… lissener, what is your definition of sociobiology, and how is it distinct from ethology or behavioural ecology?
And before lissener tries to get this back toward yet another racial argument, allow me to point out that sickle cell anemia is hereditary and almost always affects blacks and people of Mediterannian descent. This is not to say that all such people are anemic.
Bingo. Lissener, where have I once said anything like “We’re talking about something ALL members of one breed have, and NO MEMBERS of another breed”? Please quote me.
Because that’s not what I believe, and I thought I’d gone to great pains to point out that that’s not what I believe. If you’ve not been reading my posts, but rather have been assigning strawman positions to me, that at least makes your obstinance more comprehensible.
I provided cites that give an indication of the scientific orthodoxy that rejects your theory, and explained why you theory, being against the consensus knowledge base of established science, is the theory that requires proof. The only “proof” I can offer is more cites from the scientific canon.
As far as “all or none,” I feel like the misconception is yours. ALL DOGS, excepting those with inherited disorders, have ALL dog behaviors, at the level of instinct, coded into their DNA. Inbreeding may bring about a repression of certain intinctual behaviors in certain inbred lines–a retardation, as it were, of herding instincts, for example; that’s an interesting theory (IMHO) for testing, but it’s never been scientifically tested. But even at best, you cannot breed for MORE of any particular trait; you could only breed for repression of other traits. So as far as my understanding of genetics, a Portugese water dog may have LESS herding instinct than a border collie, but the collie doesn’t have MORE herding instinct than the Ur dog; the genetic Eve of dogs. And a Portugese water dog can certainly be trained to herd. Again, an interesting theory to test.
To restate: ALL dogs (individual exceptions aside) have the potential for ALL dog behaviors. Inbreeding MAY retard certain instincts, but only as a negative process, and again this has never been tested.
You’re trying to correlate certain nuances of more of this instinct with that recognizable physical characteristic. This is a human instinct for pattern recognition, which is helpful, as a species, when our ancestors noticed the pattern that every time a lion was in the neighborhood somebody died; but not so helpful to gamblers, or to people who rely on anecdotal evidence–like gambling–to make absolute statements of fact.
Your cite covers a topic already covered: it discusses different species-specific instinctual behaviors, while this debate is about refining those behaviors WITHIN a species; the racial profiling of the dog world :dubious: .
Read back in the thread for a definition of sociobiology.
My experience as a dog trainer has led me (anecdotally) to believe that a dog who’s hard to train in ONE behavior is usually hard to train in ALL behaviors. I’ve known some stupid dogs in my life; the stupidest ever was a Blue Merle Collie who couldn’t have herded his ass with opposable thumbs and a cell phone.
You’re talking about, for a parallel analogy, “racial profiling”: insisting on associating certain preordained behaviors with certain (unrelated) physical characteristics. There is no scientific basis for this.
Can you expound on this for me? Two things I am confused about. Are you saying that Eve, the ur dog, could herd as well as any dog today, could guard as well as any dog today, could see as well as any dog today, etc.? And are you saying that my Jack Russell Terriier has the potential to be a good herder?
In my experience, training mixed breeds is, in general and again anecdotally, easier an more rewarding than training purebreeds, with exceptions of course. My experience leaves me with the prejudice that purebreeds are, on average, stupider than mixed breeds. I’d be perfectly confident training a mixed breed dog for any task his physical conformation would lend itself too.
And yes, all of those “breed-specific” traits are present in all breeds, just emphasized, almost entirely by training, in one breed or another. I have no doubt that, unless his intelligence is way off, that your Jack could be trained to herd. This is of course a general opinion, since I don’t know your dog, but it’s definitely my opinion that this would work.
Sorry if you’re reading insult into what I’ve said; there’s none there (although there is some below). This, however*–“Jesus Christ. Lissener, do you know what teleology means? Is dog breeding teleological? Is human racial formation teleological? Learn the word”–*is pretty explicityly insulting.
Please explain why you feel that word (I can see with a Tshirt that says “Kiss Me! I can use ‘TELEOLOGICAL’ in a sentence!”) is supposed to be some kind of one-word trump in this discussion.
Lissener, it is sickening to see you be so dishonest as to pretend that there’s nothing insulting about comparing scientific views on dog breeding to human eugenics and racism. It’s below you, so stop.
Instead, how about you answer my questions on teleology? Is dog breeding teleological? Is human racial formation teleological?
However, we are not saying that dogs can be bred to be MORE aggressive but rather that non-aggressive traits can be (and have been, to an extent) breeded OUT.
Bulldogs were originally bred for bull-baiting, a practice which involved the dog grabbing a bull’s ear or nose (usually the nose), then pulling the bull backwards around a ring—or throwing and pinning the beast. Today’s Bulldogs pretty much only have a passing resemblence toward their bull-baiting predecessors, due in part to the practice being outlawed in 1835.
Remember the Knollers and their Presa Canarios? That breed came about in the 19th Century as one specifcally meant for dog fights. The dogs involved in the attact were allegedly bred to be four-legged weapons.
Bull Terriers were also originally bred for bull-baiting. Unlike the Bulldog, which had already moved into the realm of show-dog by 1835, Bull Terriers went into pit-fighting. Given that “Pit” Bull Terriers and Presa Canarios have a longer history of being bred for their tenacity and strenghth, it stands to reason that they’d be more difficult to train to be unaggressive than breeds like the Bulldog. Not to mention that for a couple of centuries people have been trying to breed out traits deemed not befit of fighting dogs, by your own reasoning it would be nigh impossible to reintroduce those traits that have been bred out.
MY ENTIRE POINT is that dog breeding and human eugenics are EXACTLY parallel, scientifically. They’re only different in our current cultural moral system. Genetically, biologically, I’m trying to get you to understand that they are EXACTLY THE SAME THING. Not even just parallels, or analogs; they are the same thing. You are choosing one “race”–say chihuahuas, or St. Bernards (remember, those two “breeds,” or races (these words are exactly synonymous in this context) and ascribing certain behaviors to that RACE alone. It is EXACTLY THE SAME THING. If science does not back up one, it does not back up either; you can’t pick and choose according to your personal MORAL compass, you must judge amorally, scientifically. You distinguish between the two 100% on moral grounds, and 0%–ZERO PERCENT–on scientific grounds.
And please give me a whole sentence to respond to, instead of tossing your favorite word around by itself so much. Maybe you CAN’T wear that Tshirt . . .
In any case, evolution is NOT teleogical. And just because breeders have culturally supported teleogical intentions in their breeding in no way proves that the breeding actually achieves those goals. Say your goal in working the drive-though at Jack in the Box is to become a millionaire. How’s that workin out?