Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat

by Hal Herzog

  Big differences also show up in the frequency with which different breeds of dogs cause harm to humans. Because they are “man’s best friend,” it is easy to forget that dogs are one step removed from an animal that kills for a living. Four and a half million Americans are bitten by dogs each year, and over 800,000 of these bites require medical attention. Many are children who have been bitten in the face. About 70% of serious attacks are attributed to just two breeds: pit bulls and rottweilers. On the other hand, Chihuahuas and dachshunds are responsible for just one half of one percent of human dog-bite injuries. Pit bulls and rotties carry the bad seed while Chihuahuas and dachshunds are innately nice, right?

  The University of Pennsylvania researchers used the C-BARQ to evaluate the propensity of 4,000 dogs from thirty-three breeds to bite strangers, turn on their owners, and pick fights with other dogs. Surprisingly, pit bulls and rottweilers were not the breeds most likely to attack people—Chihuahuas and dachshunds were. Pit bulls and rotties ranked in the middle of the pack. They were about as aggressive as poodles.

  BAN THE BREED OR THE DEED?

  Differences between breeds in serious attacks on humans raise one of the most contentious issues in our relationships with dogs: Are some breeds so inherently dangerous that it should be illegal to own one? Pit bulls were once considered a model of courage and loyalty, an excellent family pet. A pit bull named Petey was a central character in the Little Rascals films. During World War I, pit bulls were featured on military recruiting posters. But in January 2009, the United States Army, in response to six fatal dog attacks in base housing, issued a directive prohibiting pit bulls and other “aggressive or potentially aggressive breeds” on military bases.

  Denver has banned pit bulls outright. In Ohio, all pit bulls are legally considered “vicious animals,” even ones that have never shown any sign of aggression. State law in Ohio mandates that pit bulls be confined in a secure locked pen, restrained on a leash, and that their owners maintain a $100,000 liability insurance policy. Because most pit bull owners ignored the law, the city of Cincinnati has outlawed the breed entirely.

  Other communities, however, in response to pressure from animal welfare advocates and pit bull enthusiasts, are rescinding laws that discriminate against specific breeds. The mantra of the pro–pit bull faction says, “Ban the deed, not the breed!” This battle came to a head in Seattle when a group of residents who had run-ins with pit bulls approached the city council about enacting legislation that would restrict the ownership of dangerous breeds. On September 8, 2008, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer ran a story on the efforts of local pit bull defenders to stave off efforts to outlaw their pets. The timing was unfortunate. While Post-Intelligencer readers were sipping their morning coffee and reading about what loving pets pit bulls are, a seventy-one-year old Vietnamese woman named Houng Le who lived in Sea Tac, a Seattle suburb, was being worked over by a pair of them. Her neighbor grabbed a pitchfork and tried to fend the dogs off of Mrs. Le, but the attacks did not stop until a couple of deputy sheriffs showed up and shot the dogs. After ten hours, surgeons were able to successfully reattach Houng Le’s ears, but were unable to repair her mangled right arm. According to neighbors, the animals were well-behaved and gentle. One of them said, “They were playful and would lick you silly.”

  Bans against “vicious breeds,” particularly pit bulls, have become one of the most heated and divisive animal-related issues in the United States. Pit bull supporters are completely devoted to their breed. They argue that the breed’s outlaw reputation is not deserved, that most pit bulls never bite anyone, and that breed-specific legislation is a canine version of racial profiling. They want to rebrand pit bulls as “America’s Dog.” Pit bull detractors are equally vehement. They tell you that between 1982 and 2008, pit bulls were responsible for 700 maimings and 129 human deaths in the United States and Canada. (In contrast, during the same period Labrador retrievers, the most popular dog in America, maimed twenty four people and killed three.) Anthrozoologists are divided on breed bans. Most researchers I know oppose laws that would keep people from choosing a dog because the breed is inherently dangerous. Not everyone agrees. For example, Alan Beck, a pioneer in anthrozoology and director of the Center for the Human-Animal Bond at Purdue University, supports breed bans. He thinks pit bulls are loaded guns. And Sarah Knight, a British anthrozoologist, wants to see the breed become extinct.

  The same split exists among animal protection organizations. The American Veterinary Medical Association, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Humane Society of the United States, and the American Humane Association lobby against breed-specific legislation. You might think that the more radical PETA would also put their moral muscle and political clout on the side of the dogs. Not true. PETA wants pit bulls gone. They argue that pit bull bans are about reducing suffering, not racial profiling. PETA points out that pit bulls are the victims of much of the abuse that Americans heap upon dogs. Organized dogfights are only part of the problem. PETA claims that pit bulls are more likely than any other breed to be beaten, starved, and neglected by irresponsible owners. Several studies have linked pit bull ownership with antisocial behavior. This includes an Ohio study which found that owners of high-risk dogs, almost all of whom were pit bulls, were seven times more likely to have been convicted of violent crimes and eight times more likely to have been convicted of drug offenses than owners of low-risk dogs. Finally, 900,000 unwanted and unadoptable pit bulls are put to death in animal shelters in the United States each year.

  Keep in mind, however, that the C-BARQ study found that pit bulls and rottweilers are no more vicious than the average beagle. Only 7% of pit bull owners reported that their pet had tried to bite a stranger, compared to 20% of dachshund owners. So why are these breeds responsible for two-thirds of fatal dog attacks? I have to admit that I would rather have it out with an angry Chihuahua than a rottweiler or pit bull who wanted to eat my lunch. Even if they are less aggressive than Chihuahuas, an attack by a rottweiler or pit bull is much more likely to put you in the hospital simply because the dogs are big and powerful and can do more damage.

  One reason for the jump in rottweiler and pit bull attacks on humans is that the breeds suddenly became popular. In 1979, most people had never heard of a rottweiler. The breed ranked forty-first in popularity in the United States, with only 3,000 new puppies registered with the AKC each year. In contrast, with 60,000 puppy registrations a year, German shepherds were among the most loved dogs in America. But in the mid-1980s, while German shepherd registrations remained essentially flat, rottweilers became hot. Between 1979 and 1993, rottie registrations soared to over 100,000 new puppies a year. They became the second most popular breed in the United States, and nearly a million registered rotties were living in American homes.

  The surge in the demand for rottweilers came at a cost. Between 1979 and 1990, rottweilers killed six people in the United States compared to thirteen fatalities by German shepherds. Abruptly, however, the gruesome death statistics reversed. Over the next eight years, German shepherds killed four people while rottweilers killed thirty-three. The spike in deaths was, in part, attributable to their increased numbers. Even if a breed’s temperament is unchanged, more dogs mean more dog attacks.

  In 1993, rottweilers temporarily overtook pit bulls as America’s most dangerous dog. The breed, however, soon became the victim of its own popularity. The rash of attacks generated negative publicity, and insurance companies began to cancel the policies of rottweiler owners. Over the next decade, rottweiler registrations tanked, falling from 100,000 puppies a year to fewer than 20,000. With the right owners, rotties, like pit bulls, can make great pets. But a lot of people who impulsively picked up a rottweiler puppy at the height of their popularity were unprepared when their cute bundle of fur morphed into Cujo.

  OODLES OF POODLES: WHY DOG BREEDS

  SUDDENLY BECOME POPULAR

  The rapid rise and fall in the popularity of some dog
breeds raises the more general question of what fuels changes in human cultures. Take Crocs, those ugly, squishy plastic shoes. Did Crocs become popular because they were in some objective sense superior to other shoes—cheaper, more comfortable, better for your back? Or were they simply a fad that swept across American culture like the flu?

  We can ask the same question about the sudden popularity of breeds like rottweilers. After all, rottweilers are expensive to feed, have to be delivered by C-section, and are prone to hip dysplasia, diabetes, cataracts, and Addison’s disease. Theirs was not, however, the biggest fad in American canine history. That distinction belongs to poodles. Between 1946 and 2007, 5.5 million poodle puppies were registered with the AKC, 2 million more than the runner-up, Labrador retrievers. Poodle popularity peaked in 1969, when nearly a third of all new registrations were for poodles and the AKC hired a full-time staffer just to handle the glut of poodle paperwork. The ascendancy of the breed was fast; yearly registrations increased 12,000% between 1949 and 1969. The poodle craze was not limited to dogs. Poodle skirts, usually white or pink and embellished with the silhouette of a French poodle, became de rigeur for the bobby-sox crowd. Today, they are hot items on eBay.

  Consider now the English toy spaniel. While poodles were invading postwar American culture like army ants on the march, toy spaniel registrations dropped from a measly 123 in 1949 to an even lower 45 in 1969. These dogs are small and cute. They look like Lady in Lady and the Tramp. According to the official AKC breed description, they are “a bright and interested little dog, affectionate and willing to please.” What could be better than that?

  The difference in the popularity of these two breeds raises an issue that transcends our taste in pets. Why do some foods, songs, colors, books, religions, sneaker styles—you name it—catch on while others languish in obscurity?

  One possibility is that, like a genetic mutation that increases an organism’s reproductive fitness, some cultural innovations become spectacularly successful because they are better than the competition at doing something. Pop-top beer cans and iPods come to mind. But transient enthusiasms for nose rings and fondue pots are more like nonfunctional variations on a theme. Did poodles come to dominate the dog niche in American homes because they were smarter or more obedient or easier to fall in love with than the unpopular breeds? Or were they just famous for being famous?

  I became interested in this question when I was asked to write an article on the evolutionary psychology of human-animal relationships and decided to include a discussion of cultural evolution. I was trolling the Internet for examples of rapid changes in attitudes toward animals when I stumbled on the American Kennel Club Web site, which listed the numbers of puppy registrations for each breed for the previous three years. Scanning the columns of figures, I noticed that the number of Dalmatian puppies had dropped precipitously. I called a Dalmatian breeder I knew who was a member of the AKC board of directors and asked if she could arrange for the organization to give me Dalmatian registration numbers over a longer period of time. A few weeks later, a thick package from the AKC’s Manhattan headquarters showed up at my office. It was the mother lode—sixty years of registration statistics for every AKC breed. Forty-eight million dogs.

  That’s the good news. The bad news was that I now had to make sense of the largest data set in the history of psychology. Not knowing what else to do, I made graphs charting the growth of each breed. I found that since the end of World War II, only four breeds have been America’s most popular dog. They are, in order: cocker spaniels, beagles, poodles, cocker spaniels (yes, again), and Labrador retrievers. These dogs have taken very different routes to capturing the hearts of American pet owners. The poodle’s path to popularity was meteoric, but Labs took the slow and steady road to Number 1, increasing at a rate of about 10% a year over four decades. The graphs for cocker spaniels and beagles are wavy.

  The graphs also revealed that most dog breeds never weasel their ways into our lives. How many of your friends own an otterhound, a breed that maxed out in 1993 at seventy puppies? Or a Harrier, whose registrations have hovered between six and forty since 1934? Soon I became obsessed with deciphering America’s shifting canine landscape. At night, I dreamt about demographic curves. During the day, I spent way too much time flipping through breed growth charts, boring my friends with dog talk, thinking about obscure breeds with weird names—Keeshonds, Schipperkes, Puliks.

  The fact is that I was getting nowhere.

  HOW DOG BREEDS ARE LIKE BABY NAMES

  My lucky break came one afternoon when I ran across an article in the journal Biology Letters written by two researchers I had never heard of. One was a biology graduate student at Duke University named Matt Hahn, the other Alex Bentley, a post-doc in anthropology at University College London. Their article was about names that people give their babies.

  Matt and Alex were from different disciplines but they both studied how dumb luck affects evolutionary change—in Alex’s case, how cultures change, and in Matt’s, how genes evolve. Their hypothesis was that many shifts in human culture—from designs engraved on Neolithic pottery to country music hits—are attributable to the fact that humans are inveterate copycats. Baby names offered an ideal way to test their idea, as the Social Security Administration maintains a Web site with the frequencies of the 1,000 most common first names in the United States for each decade in the twentieth century.

  Matt and Alex downloaded the names of a gazillion babies and went to work. Using computer models used to study changes in gene frequencies, they discovered that continual shifts in our favorite first names are explained by a theory developed to explain a mechanism of evolutionary change called random drift. The basic idea is startlingly simple: Styles change because people unconsciously copy one another. Occasionally, someone invents a new baby name or develops a new dog breed. Whether it gets copied and becomes popular is largely a matter of random chance. In matters of taste, we often follow the herd.

  I admit that I could not follow the mathematics that Matt and Alex used to prove that baby names become popular by dumb luck, but I got the gist of their argument. It dawned on me that shifts in trendy puppies might offer another way to test their ideas. I emailed the authors and attached a couple of my dog graphs. For good measure, I added, “By the way, my data set consists of 48 million puppies. Interested?”

  Their response was immediate and enthusiastic. “Yes! Send us the file.” Their analysis revealed that just like baby names, dog breeds usually get popular by a throw of the cosmic dice. Our transient preferences for dog breeds follow a type of statistical distribution that mathematicians call power laws. In human societies, these show up in situations in which large numbers of people influence each other. Power law graphs are elegant in the way that a Brancusi statuette is. The line swoops down from the top left, dwindling gradually to right. Malcolm Gladwell, the New Yorker writer who has made a career of pointing out the real-world implications of arcane findings in the behavioral sciences, compares power law graphs to a hockey stick lying on the floor, blade pointing up.

  The message of the power law is that, whether we are talking bestselling books, citations of scientific papers, music downloads, Web page hits, baby names, or dog breeds, roughly 20% of the available options will attract 80% of the attention, a phenomenon economists call the 80:20 rule. After the first couple of choices, popularity nosedives, dribbling closer and closer to zero. That’s why in business circles, power laws have come to be referred to as “the long tail.”

  Here’s how it works with dogs. In 2007, 81% of puppy registrations were from the top thirty-one breeds. This left the other 125 breeds to fight over the popularity crumbs. The bottom fifty breeds together attracted only 1% of all new puppy registrations. Labrador retrievers, the most popular breed, generated 9,000 times more puppy registrations than English fox hounds, the least popular breed. That’s the inevitability of the long tail.

  According to the random drift hypothesis, fashions are ever-chan
ging because new innovations pop up every now and then. For example, a man invents an ugly plastic slip-on shoe he names after crocodiles, or someone develops a new dog breed by crossing a miniature schnauzer with a Yorkie (official name: Snorkie). Most new ideas are flops, but every now and then one will catch on. One implication of this throw-of-the-dice view of cultural change is that, for all practical purposes, it is impossible to accurately predict the next big thing—no matter if it is a shoe style, a baby name, a hit song, or a dog breed.

  Our analysis of AKC registrations revealed that our tastes in dogs reflect the same mob psychology that leads people to think that nose rings are sexy. I am arguing, of course, that temporary enthusiasms for breeds are spread by mental viruses that, like biological ones, sometimes erupt into epidemics. An epidemic, whether swine flu or a new dance, goes through three stages. The first is slow, steady growth. Once it hits the proverbial tipping point, it spreads like fire until the third inevitable stage: burnout.

  The same pattern plays out in dogs. In the 1950s, Irish setter registrations hovered between 2,000 and 3,000 a year. In 1962 they reached the tipping point and the breed “went viral.” Registrations took off, jumping to over 60,000 in 1974, an increase of 2,300%. Then, as suddenly as it had risen, their popularity plummeted. By the end of the burnout stage, Irish setter registrations were only 5% of what they were at the peak of their popularity. The graph of their rise and fall is perfectly symmetrical, and, from start to finish, their fifteen minutes of fame lasted exactly twenty-five years. A dozen other breeds, including Dobermans, Old English sheepdogs, and Saint Bernards, have shown the same pattern.

  THE RISE AND FALL OF THE PEDIGREED DOG

  Epidemics in the popularity of these breeds illustrate the influence that cultural whims can have on our relationships with animals. Presently, Americans seem to be in the burnout phase of another canine fad—the desire to own a purebred dog.