A dog’s breed doesn’t determine much about its behavior

Alex Cranz

Elinor has never owned a dog. She has been studying dog genetics since she was a graduate student. They are good models for studying genetic diseases. Thousands of dogs were collected for genetic and behavioral data. All that data gave the research team the ability to ask a question that had been on their mind for a long time: does a dog's breed tell anything about how that dog acts?

The director of the Vertebrate Genomics Group at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard said during a press briefing that everybody was assuming that breed was predictive of behavior in dogs. We could do that.

Many people hold stereotypes about their dogs. A new paper published in the journal Science says that the dog breed doesn't actually predict behavior. Some genes associated with human sociability were found in the research. Around 9 percent of dog behavior was explained by breed.

Marjie Alonso, a study author and executive director of the International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants, said that dogs are individuals.

The study looked at the responses of nearly 20,000 dog owners about their dog's behavior, asking about things like how easy they were to train, how they played with toys, and the times they behaved aggressively or retreated from conflict. Over 2,000 dogs have their genes analyzed. Half of the dogs were mutts, which made it possible to tease apart breeds and behaviors. If certain behaviors were linked to certain breeds on a genetic level, mutts with more ancestry from a breed should share that breed's behavioral traits.

The study found that some behaviors, like howling, have stronger connections to other breeds. Bloodhounds and beagles were more likely to howl than other dogs. Some genetic links were found to how responsive dogs are to directions. Mixed-breed dogs with border collie ancestry were more likely to have that trait.

How easily a dog is frightened had almost no relationship to breed despite being stereotypes of some types of dogs being less scared than others. The size of the dog did not have the ability to predict how the dog would act. People sometimes assume that large dogs are calmer than small dogs.

The study found that breed wasn't a good way to figure out how a dog will act. I think they find patterns even when there aren't.

Many dog owners have a similar experience with the findings. People will get new dogs that are the same breed as an older dog. When the new dog doesn't act the same as the first, they are frustrated.

Alonso said that they get the same breed because they wanted the same dog.