New Study on Dog Breeds and Behavior

Family, Education, Health and Pets
1
An interesting new study has come out that challenges common breed stereotypes and brings into question assumptions about behavior linked to breeds.

A good lay article discussing this study, from the NYT:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/28/s...ior-genes.html

Quoting from the article:

After conducting owner surveys for 18,385 dogs and sequencing the genomes of 2,155 dogs, a group of researchers reported a variety of findings in the journal Science on Thursday, including that for predicting some dog behaviors, breed is essentially useless, and for most, not very good.

(The NYT article may be behind a paywall - many other news outlets have picked up the study, a quick google will give you other articles.)

The study was also discussed on a recent Science Friday podcast:

https://www.sciencefriday.com/segmen...reed-behavior/

The interview is with Elinor Karlsson of the University of Massachusetts - well worth listening to.

Abstract of the study, from the journal Science:

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...651.1609118629

We surveyed owners of 18,385 dogs (49% purebred) and sequenced the DNA of 2155 dogs. Most behavioral traits are heritable [heritability (h2) > 25%], but behavior only subtly differentiates breeds. Breed offers little predictive value for individuals, explaining just 9% of variation in behavior. For more heritable, more breed-differentiated traits, like biddability (responsiveness to direction and commands), knowing breed ancestry can make behavioral predictions somewhat more accurate (see the figure). For less heritable, less breed-differentiated traits, like agonistic threshold (how easily a dog is provoked by frightening or uncomfortable stimuli), breed is almost uninformative.

FYI, the owner surveys were gathered by the 'citizen's science' Darwin's Ark project:

https://darwinsark.org

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I'll be following further research into this topic with great interest.

(Here's looking at you, BSL... )

2
Seems that breed is a very small influence on behaviour. Interesting. I have never had a puppy as we always have older rescues, and never had two dogs of the same breed, in fact never had dogs of a specific breed, apart from daughter's dachshund. What do you think?

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01193-1

3
This study has caught the attention of a wide spectrum of media, from the usual science-oriented magazines like Nature and Science, as well as the general press.

There’s another thread referencing this study, along with some background info/articles:

https://www.englishforum.ch/pet-corn...-behavior.html

4
In my past life I used to rescue dogs and cats.

And in my limited experience (rescued and found homes for ~150 dogs and a few cats) breed didn't seem to be a strong determining factor in the behavior of a dog. Some dogs were more excitable, some more aggressive, some more calm, but those behaviors were all over the place. I had calm, cool, collected pit bulls and ferocious little yip-yip dogs, you never could tell what you were getting into.

And the behavior between the puppies in a litter were all over the place as well.

But this is just anecdotal.