Erin Hecht, PI of the Evolutionary Neuroscience Lab & Director of the Canine Brains Project. Dept of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University. (she/her)
Cambridge, MA
Joined November 2018
- Tweets556
- Following388
- Followers1.5K
- Likes1.2K
Human-directed aggression in dogs is a serious problem, both for humans and for dogs. It deserves serious research. We need real data. Not the perpetuation of assumptions and stereotypes.
So why is the media reporting that pit bulls are especially likely to become aggressive if they experience trauma? One possibility: hallucinations from LLMs that generate initial drafts of the news articles. AI reflects the biases of our culture as a whole.
We never even mentioned pit bulls in the text of our paper... because their response to early life stress wasn't significantly different from the average of all other breeds.
As you can see here, pits who experience early life stress actually have a pretty *small* bump in aggression compared to other breeds.
Some media are reporting that our recent study (nature.com/articles/s41598-0…) shows that pit bulls are especially likely to become aggressive if they are exposed to early life stress. Simply not true.
Why is this important? If we can identify the genes and pathways underlying this risk and resilience, we might be able to develop targeted interventions. We are already analyzing the dogs' DNA samples and MRI scans!
The impact of early life stress is not evenly distributed across breeds. Some breeds are especially sensitive. Others appear to be protected. This suggests the existence of **heritable factors for risk and resilience.**
Traumatic experiences during the first 6 months of life were the most impactful. This is known as a sensitive period in development. Other mammals have them too, including humans.
