Does a dog’s breed determine its behavior? A new study looked at all the factors to identify the primary indicators of dog behavior. The surprising results you need to know for selecting a canine companion.
New study on dog behavior: Good breed or bad breed? Purebred vs. mixed?
Anyone with interest in dogs has probably heard numerous proclamations from others when it comes to certain breeds. Indeed, there are a lot of stereotypes about dog breeds. These also extend into purebred versus mixed.
Topping the list is Pit Bulls and Rottweilers being too aggressive. Working dogs, like huskies, are said to be too rambunctious, needing a constant “job to do.” Conversely, certain breeds, like retrievers, are recommended because their friendly with children. But, some people follow this advice, only to take such a dog home and find out that particular dog doesn’t really care for kids.
It is just such stereotypes and their inconsistencies of them that a new major study published today in the journal Science took a look at. Researchers looked at many of the widely-held assumptions that connected dog breeds to behavioral traits, challenging these to gain a fuller understanding of canine traits overall.
In the study, researchers used two points of reference. First, sequencing the DNA of over 2100 dogs. The analysis looked at data from 78 breeds. Second, they assessed roughly 200,000 survey answers from owners of over 18,000 dogs, Yahoo! news reported.
What the researchers found may surprise you and give you some future guidance when it comes to picking a canine companion.
Dog study: Surprising answer for choosing the best pooch
Are there good dog breeds or bad dog breeds? The short answer is: No. Is a purebred better than a mix? Again, the short answer is: No.
What the researchers found was that dog breed alone is a poor indicator of canine activity, ABC reported. Breed stereotypes do not give a good picture of an individual dog’s behavior.
In the end, researchers say their findings prove that you can’t go by the current assumptions that surround dog breed stereotypes, especially when it concerns whether some breeds are more aggressive, obedient, or affectionate than others.
In other words, the traits of an individual dog are more important.
The researchers used golden retrievers as an example, a dog with a long-standing reputation of being “friendly.”
“Although ‘friendliness’ is the trait we commonly associate with golden retrievers, what we found is that the defining criteria of a golden retriever are its physical characteristics—the shape of its ears, the color and quality of its fur, its size—not whether it is friendly,” said study senior author Professor Elinor Karlsson from the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School in a statement. “A golden retriever is only marginally more likely to be more friendly than a mixed-breed or another purebred dog, such as a dachshund.”
“The majority of behaviors that we think of as characteristics of specific modern dog breeds have most likely come about from thousands of years of evolution from wolf to wild canine to domesticated dog, and finally to modern breeds,” Dr. Karlsson continued. “These heritable traits predate our concept of modern dog breeds by thousands of years.”
“We basically showed that every behavior was seen in every breed,” Dr. Karlsson added. “In any breed, you’ve got a pretty good chance of getting a dog that’s not fitting to what the breed stereotype is.”
