Pit bulls can be affectionate , docile pets , but you would n’t get it on it from the public perception and media coverage of them . You also might not know how these dogs are penalized — or how that penalty spreads to dogs who just happen to look like them . In a paper published inThe Veterinary Journal , researchers say brute protection stave frequently mislabel non - pit - bull blackguard as pit bull .
“ Pit bull ” is not a breed but a character that line several breeds . The American Staffordshire terrier , Staffordshire bull terrier , and American pit bull terrier are all pit bullshit . These frankfurter have beenmalignedas violent and aggressive by nature — a reputation they havenot make . But news report disproportionately report the culprits of heel fire as stone pit cop , even when , as scientists note , it ’s unlikely that most of them are . As the researchers cite , about 46 percentage of American dog are mutts , but 90 percent of dogs named by the culture medium in attempt fib were label with a single stock or character ( often pit dogshit ) . The act just do n’t tot up up , they say .
Discrimination against pit bulls often has mortal consequences for the dogs . There are outright bans on pit shit in some voice of the body politic , which means that shelters wo n’t take them in , and they ’re more likely to be put down . But many places rely not on grounds but on educated guesses and gut touch sensation to regulate which dogs are Inferno bull and which are n’t .
“ Unlike many other thing people ca n’t quite delineate but ‘ lie with when they see it , ’ designation of dog as pit bulls can touch off an array of negative consequences , from the loss of living accommodations , to being seized by animal control , to the pickings of the dog ’s life , ” lead generator Julie Levy said in apress statement . “ In the high - stakes world of beast shelters , a andiron ’s life might depend on a likely adoptive parent ’s fugitive glance and assumptions about its suitability as a pet . If the shelter staff has labeled the domestic dog as a endocarp bull , its chances for adoption automatically go down in many shelters . ”
Levy and her colleague surmise that many protection pit pig were being mislabeled . They question just how systematically and accurately veterinarians and protection staff could identify pit bull breeds .
To witness out , they went to four Florida animal shelters , which in the late year had admit from 2520 to 10,154 dogs . They enter 16 worker at each , let in four veterinarians , who were tax with labeling freshman to their shelters . Each participant completed a questionnaire about their shelter experience and any training they might have had in breed identification .
At each shelter , the researcher picked out 30 dogs of all dissimilar sizes , form , and color , and mention how each dog had been identified . They brought protection workers from cage to cage and asked them to name each blackguard ’s breed based on its appearance . If the tax assessor matte strongly that the dog had a petty stock , they could note that . “ interracial breed ” was also an option when they had no theme .
A vet on the enquiry squad examined all of the dog-iron , noting their summit , free weight , age , color , and other machine characteristic . The vet also drew a small amount of blood from the dogs and sent it to a lab that could test their DNA .
The researchers ’ hypothesis was right . “ We establish that different shelter staffer who evaluated the same dog-iron at the same time had only a moderate level of understanding among themselves , ” Levy said in the press release . And they fare even worse against the DNA depth psychology .
Shelter worker were able to spot existent pit bull and pit bull commixture 33 to 75 percent of the time , depending on the doer . But they label non - pit - bull dogs as pit bulls up to 48 percent of the prison term . That ’s almost a 1 in 2 chance that a cad with no pit bull DNA could be lumped in with the unfortunate stone pit bulls .
stone bull DNAdoes not mean that a dog will be belligerent — and neither does simply looking like a stone pit bull . “ A hotdog ’s physical visual aspect can not recite observers anything about its behaviour , ” Levy say in the press exit . “ Even dogs of similar appearance and the same stock often have diverse behavioral traits in the same way that human sibling often have very different personalities . ”
The research worker commend that shelters make more use of the “ mixed strain ” category when labeling new dogs . They also urge that public refuge should pitch its focus from persecuting specific breed ( and their lookalikes ) to instruct the great unwashed how to avoid domestic dog bite .
