Another factor is probably the owners themselves, but there are likely more than just these two. We don't have enough info to disentangle possible partial causes and how much each cause contributes.

I wince when I read about pit bull owners proclaiming how their dog is harmless and 'one of the family'. They've clearly not watched the videos I have. And I don't accept that when a pit bull it's the 'fault of the owner'. There's something inherent in them that causes their brain to switch into attack mode for any reason. And once they do attack it's very difficult to get them to stop.

Nuture over nature in my opinion.

Dogs are like people in that childhood trauma never really goes away. If a dog was mistreated at any point in their life. Even before you owned the dog years ago, it could manifest in aggression.

We had a dog growing up, medium sized poodle mix, that we had adopted at one year and were told had been abused by the husband. Not typically an aggressive dog. However certain unfamiliar men, not all men, but some skinny, white men it seemed were liable to be met with aggression and family guarding behavior.

Every dog I have raised since puppyhood, including a 115 pound mixed breed and a 100 pound husky have had zero aggression issues. That is not to say one can be careless. There is always the chance, and you have to have the space and be able to handle any dog you own.

So you watched some videos, and now you know much better how the animal behaves than those who have lived with it for its entire life?

I know an unnecessary risk when I see one. Those breeds are banned in some countries for good reason.

Do you though? People with a lot more information than you have disagree strongly with you.

I know I had two rather fearless pug dogs for 15 years, and the only scary incidents we had during their lives were with pits and mixes. There was one dog park in particular where there was a higher than normal concentration of them that I had to stop going to altogether due to the number of scary incidents. One in particular where I had to physically step in and was bit, fortunately the damage was minor.

As a consequence of this, I became accustomed to immediately assessing the aggressiveness of the dogs by eye gazing upon approach, and found the vast majority gentle and sweet. So I get the frustration of their owners, esp ones who take them in as rescues as the local shelters are flooded with them. 9/10 of these animals will probably go through life showing no aggression and live life as wonderful family pets.

But all these excuses about how it’s the owners fault in how they raised them, that there is no official breed, etc, etc... is bs hand waving. These dogs can be dangerous like that pet chimp who ripped that woman’s hands and face off. There is something instinctual in them, and the physical ability, to do real harm.

As to other breeds that can be worrisome, generally bred for protection, such as dobies, rotts, and German Shepard’s, I never sensed the fear that one of those would instantly end the life of my dogs within seconds. Pits and mixes - easily a “holy shit that was close” encounter in the triple digits, probably once a month on average throughout their lifetimes. Far too many situations where an owner had trouble controlling their dog and they got dangerously close.

Blaming the violence on the race of dog tells us more about the reporter than the news story.

Without knowing anything about the owner and the dog, I would rather meet an unleashed Golden Retriever than unleashed Pitbull. Am I wrong thinking like that?

Of course not, and this age-old argument in defence of pit-bulls comes up again and again, with the same point being missed.

Pitbulls could be the sweetest breed in the world, the point is that "when" they attack, it ends up much much worse than your super aggressive chihuaha. And in some cases 1 to 1 a man can not win the fight.

There a few breeds like that (e.g. mastiffs) but pitbulls are one of the most popularly owned dogs in this category.

I will agree with this. I don’t think Pit Bull types are inherently more likely to bite. I just think that they cause a lot more damage when they do bite. Most minor bites are probably unreported. House cats bite and claw all the time and no one reports it because the damage is minor.

> House cats bite and claw all the time and no one reports it because the damage is minor.

Just jumping in here to say that if your house cat bites you and draws blood you should absolutely go to a doctor ASAP because cat mouths are nasty and cat bites often get very seriously infected (like, "lose your hand" infected) very quickly.

I have been around house cats for almost my entire life and have been bit and scratched countless times and I never have had any wound that has had an infection as a result. So would like to see the actual statistics on how often people lose their hands from their pet cat biting them.

Not that I am saying one shouldn't use applicable wound care but find it difficult to believe that you must visit a doctor right away or else you will get a bad infection and lose a limb.

cf. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15456433/

"Appropriate early treatment of cat bites of the hand is the key to success. Treatment with antibiotics, surgical drainage, debridement and copious irrigation, and use of corticosteroids in some cases, proved to be effective. Hand elevation and intensive physiotherapy after a short period of immobilization is critical. We believe that prophylactic antibiotics should be given even in case of a minor infection following cat bites of the hand. Clear guidelines for clinical recognition of infection, hospital admission and management are provided in our study."

That's a study of people already visiting the hospital for a cat bite, which implies they were fairly serious wounds. Of course if you have a serious enough wound to go to the hospital over and possibly get plastic surgery to repair, yes there is a serious risk of infection obviously. The OP was implying that ANY cat bite that breaks the skin means you should rush to the doctor which that paper does not prove.

Furthermore, I already acknowledge that proper wound care should not be ignored.

+1. One of my clients got scratched on her wrist by a house cat she had nurtured for years. She ended up spending a significant amount of time in the hospital with a serious infection that nearly resulted in amputation.

I have been attacked by 2 packs of dogs...neither were wild, just dogs that were not leashed up and formed a pack in the neighborhoods.

One pack was formed of smaller dogs, mostly of the puntable size. The other more medium size, family friendly dogs.

Neither packs contained pit-bulls. It does not matter about the breeds in the pack, just the size and number. 5-10 Jack Russel terriers can mess you up just as easily as 3-4 Labradors.

I notice that the discussion of dangerous dogs now is focused on pit-bulls, I remember as a kid that the German Shepherd and Rottweiler always seemed scary.

At first I was completely agreeing with you and found parent's sentiment misguided. But, then I thought what if we took this to an extreme and generalized about humans? Human violence isn't always uniformly distributed amongst the races, but we try not to jump to conclusions about supposed racial genetic predispositions. I think the dog deserves the benefit of the doubt is what I'm saying. But that's also not accounting that some dogs have been bred for violence. So I guess you are right in some ways and wrong in others.

> Below are lists of fatal dog attacks in the United States reported by the news media, published in scholarly papers, or mentioned through other sources. In the lists below, the breed is assigned by the sources.

It's because you're looking at a biased slice of data. There's no national database of fatal dog attacks and people are scared of pit bulls so the media reports on them more.

And also because pitbulls were created to fight other dogs, and descend from bulldogs, which were created to fight to the death against bulls.

Some data does exist:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305270428_Character...

> Pit bull bites were implicated in half of all surgeries performed and over 2.5 times as likely to bite in multiple anatomic locations as compared to other breeds.

It is also because Pit Bull is not a breed and so anytime a dog bites and a dog has an unclear breed, but looks vaguely like a terrier it is easier to write down that the attack was by a Pit Bull.

It is also likely that owners who desire a dog that was bred for fighting want their dog to be aggressive and so train them to be.

> people are scared of pit bulls so the media reports on them more.

How do you know this?