Dog Behavior Blog

Fatal Dog Attacks On People

The other day I received an email containing a graphic on fatal dog bite attacks in the United States from 2005 to 2009.  You can see the graphic at the bottom  of this post.

The graphic does a terrific job of summarizing information about breed-specific fatal attacks on people. It shows that out of 149 fatal attacks, 55 percent (83 attacks) were by Pit Bulls,  14 percent (21 attacks) were by Rottweilers, and various other breeds were responsible for the remaining attacks. The graphic also points out that some 4.7 million dog bites occur every year (see my blog post of March 18, 2009 on dog bite statistics).

This is valuable information. Dog bites are a serious problem, and nothing can lessen the tragedy of a person killed by dogs, or even being bitten by a dog.

However, before we decide that dogs are just plain dangerous to have around, let us keep these numbers in perspective.

The 149 fatal attacks are over a 4 year period. That averages to about 37 fatal attacks by dogs each year.

Compare that with these numbers from various sources on the internet:

Each year in the United States,

• About 50-100 people die from bee stings (Yahoo Answers).
• About 36,000 people die from the flu (CDC).
• About 40,000 people die in car accidents (NHTSA).

Let's see how the numbers stack up in terms of the chance of a fatal dog attack or the chance of getting bitten .

The 2010 population of the United States is estimated to be about 310 Million people, and there are estimated to be 110 Million households.  The US Humane Society estimates that 39 percent of households own at least one dog, and that there are about 78 Million dogs living in households.

The chance of any given person suffering a fatal dog attack is very small. Dividing 37 (the average number of fatal attacks per year) by 310,000,000 (the estimated population in the US), gives us about a one in 10 Million chance of a person being fatally attacked by a dog. This is comparable to one person suffering a fatal dog attack in the entire Los Angeles County (population 10.3 Million) which includes 88 cities.

In terms of dog bites, the chances of a person being bitten are larger. Dividing 4.7 Million by 310 Million gives us about 1.5 chances out of a hundred that a person will be bitten by a dog. This means that about 1.5 percent of the population of the United States can expect to be bitten by a dog annually.

How does this compare to the number of dog bites vs. the number of dogs? If we divide 4.7 Million (the number of dog bites) by 78 Million (the number of dogs), we get 0.06. This means that on average 6 percent of the total dogs in the United States have bitten someone annually.

So your chance of being fatally attacked by a dog is very small, but your chance of getting bitten by a dog is significantly larger.

As far as dog bites go, I think we should keep in mind two points:

One is that any dog can bite given the wrong circumstances.

The other is that dogs who are well-socialized and who are treated with kindness, respect, and gentle leadership are less likely to bite than dogs who are abused and treated with violence.

--Con Slobodchikoff

 

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Visit Oklahoma-Law.com for more information on Oklahoma dog bite laws.

Can The Shape Of A Dog’s Head Tell Us Anything About Trainability?

In 1994 Dr. Stanley Coren wrote a landmark book, The Intelligence of Dogs, where he sampled the opinions of a large number of obedience judges on the trainability of different breeds of dogs (see Dr. Coren’s blog post from June 10, 2009 on our blog here).  Dr. Coren identified the breeds that were most and those that were least trainable, and related this to the relative intelligence of the different dog breeds, at least as far as their general trainability went.

A recent article (Helton, W. F. 2009. Cephalic Index and Perceived Dog Trainability. Behavioural Processes 82:355-358) attempts to connect the shape of dogs’ heads to their trainability. By looking at the ratio of the width to the length of the skull (a cephalic index), dogs can be categorized as dolichocephalic (having a short skull width with respect to the length, as in Greyhounds), mesocephalic (having a medium width of the skull with respect to the length, as in Poodles), and brachycephalic (having a large skull width with respect to the length, as in Staffordshire Bull Terriers).

These groups of dogs differ in their morphological specializations. Dolichocephalic dogs are specialized for running, while brachycephalic dogs are more specialized for fighting.

Interestingly, the eye morphology of the two types of dogs differs. Brachycephalic dogs like the Staffordshire Bull Terrier have a lot of the retinal ganglions concentrated in a central area, like the human fovea, allowing them to focus better on single objects, such as other dogs they might need to fight. Dolichocephalic dogs like the Greyhound are like wolves in their retinal morphology. They have a visual streak of retinal ganglia, distributed like a line across the retina, allowing them to best see moving objects such as prey on the horizon rather than focus in detail on single objects. (for details, see McGreevy, P. et al. 2004. A strong correlation exists between the distribution of retinal ganglion cells and nose length in the dog. Brain, Behavior and Evolution 63: 13-22; DOI: 10.1159/000073756).

Curiously enough, the Helton article in Behavioural Processes finds that the breeds that are the most trainable are those that fit into the mesocephalic category, with neither a very long or a very short nose, and a skull width that is intermediate between narrow and wide. This includes breeds such as the Border Collie, Poodle, Labrador Retriever, and Golden Retriever.

What isn’t clear to me is why this should be so. The author of the article speculates that the mesocephalic brain shape represents a compromise between a brain adapted for running and a brain adapted for fighting. So, if this is true, then maybe the breeds in the other categories are so specialized that they don’t need to learn to do new things. They either run or they fight. But the dogs in the middle can’t run as fast and can’t fight as hard, so maybe they have to be more flexible in learning how to get by in the world.

And as long as I am speculating, let me take this a little bit further. If there really is a relationship between the shape of the skull and trainability, maybe we can use this as a way of predicting the trainability of mixed breeds.  When we look at shelter dogs of mixed parentage where it isn’t obvious which breed contributed the most to the genetic makeup of the dog, maybe we can get an idea of how easy the dog is going to be to train from the shape of the skull.

In my book, all dogs are wonderful. Some just require more work than others. If we can predict how much work might have to go into training a mixed-breed dog, maybe there won’t be as many dogs returned at shelters.

--Con Slobodchikoff

 

Dog Breeds And Genetic Relatedness

Although by now most people accept that dogs and wolves are closely related genetically, a question still remains about which breeds are most related to wolves and to other breeds.  A recent study published in Nature magazine (vonHoldt, B. M. et al. 2010, Genome-wide SNP and haplotype analyses reveal a rich history underlying dog domestication, Nature 464 (8 April 2010): 898-903 DOI: 10.1038/nature08837) has examined this question.

The  experimenters used a technique called Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms(SNPs) to study the genetic relationships among samples from 912 dogs representing 85 breeds, as well as samples from 225 grey wolves from 11 different geographic areas around the world.

I was surprised to see that wolves from the Middle East contributed a significant portion of genetic variation to most of the modern dog breeds.  Of the dog breeds that were examined, the Basenji had the highest genetic relatedness to Middle Eastern wolves.  Other breeds that were more closely related to wolves included the Akita, Chow Chow, Dingo, Shar-Pei, Alaskan Malamute, Siberian Husky, Afghan Hound, Saluki, American Eskimo, and Samoyed.

Breeds that had higher genetic relatedness with European wolves included Greyhounds, Whippets, Miniature Pinschers, and Staffordshire Bull Terriers.  The Akita and Chow Chow had higher relatedness with Chinese wolves, as might be expected.

Also as could be expected, Old World wolves had higher genetic relatedness to dog breeds than New World wolves, suggesting that domestication of dogs took place in Europe, the Middle East, or Asia, rather than in North America.

Some of the genetic relationships between the breeds surprised me. For example:

·         the Chihuahua was relatively closely related genetically to the Pomeranian and the American Eskimo,

·         the Papillon was relatively closely related to the Pug, Brussels Griffon, Shih-tzu, and Pekinese,

·         the Portugese Water Dog was relatively closely related to the German Shepherd,  Standard Schnauzer, Giant Schnauzer, and Doberman Pincher

·         the Newfoundland was closely related to the  Labrador, Flat-Coated Retriever and Golden Retriever,

·         the Rhodesian Ridgeback was relatively closely related to the Great Dane and Rottweiler. 

 

These relationships suggest that our conventional categories of dogs (e.g., Working Dogs, Herding Dogs, etc.) are groupings that we make for our convenience, rather than groupings that reflect the relatedness of the different breeds.

One thing, however, does not surprise me: We humans are pretty good at coming up with different breeds of dogs.

--Con Slobodchikoff

Another Dog Photo-Op

Note from Con Slobodchikoff: This is a guest post by Randall Johnson, who has contributed other guest posts on dog behavior.

I’m one of the Dog Behavior Blog readers who asked Dr. Slobodchikoff to publish photos of Raja and I want to thank him for finding a way to do so. It was nice to finally meet this key personality.  In return, I’m submitting a photo of one of my three dogs, Suzie, an all-black miniature pinscher, who was adopted off the street in 2005. Photographing any all-black animal involves a set of unique challenges, especially for non-photographers like me, but this one was taken outside a few months ago, against a lighter-colored background and with plenty of ambient sunlight, so if you squint your eyes enough and focus on her face, you can see the outline of her dark brown eyes. Like other members of her breed, she’s bold, brassy, and very clever. She’s also a bit of a ‘daredevil’, who chases the occasional motorcycle that passes by the house in a canine version of radical sports. To my chagrin, my other two dogs now occasionally join in the chase, which, fortunately, lasts only to the end of the block.  Then, they stop, turn around, and saunter back to the house, looking very pleased with themselves. I know this sounds like an anthropomorphic interpretation, but there’s something about their facial expressions and overall body language that sends a clear, recognizable signal of satisfaction.

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--Con Slobodchikoff