Belyaev’s Foxes: A thread about a geneticists experiment, what it teaches us about dog breeds, and why #pitbulladvocates are wrong. 
One staple of every #pitbulladvocates argument is that pitbulls only look mean or dangerous, that behavior and temperament isn’t in anyway linked to appearance, therefore it’s wrong to judge pitbulls by their appearance. Except when we look at the evidence, we see it isn’t true.
By far one of the best and longest spanning experiments that show this is Dmitry Belyaev’s fox experiment. Belyaev was a Soviet geneticist who used his experiment to better understand the domestication of dogs, and hypothesized anatomical difference could be the result of
selecting solely for behavior traits. He chose to select for tameness, with the hypothesis that selectively breeding for that trait would result in hormonal changes that would ultimately end up changing the anatomical and physiological characteristics of the population.
His hypothesis proved correct. As he selectively bred for tameness, his foxes changed in appearance. After about 40 generations, he had truly domesticated foxes, but they didn’t much resemble the wild foxes he started with. In selecting for behavior, he changed their appearance.
What does this mean for dogs? It’s the basis of how we have so many breeds that vary so drastically in appearance today. Since the beginning of dog breeding, dogs have been selectively bred for behavior characteristics and that selection process alters a breeds/types appearance.
Scent hounds were bred for tracking, and by repeatedly selecting dogs that were good at tracking, the typical characteristics of scent hounds emerged (i.e. longer ears that help direct scent to a nose that generally has more scent receptors than other breed types).
Likewise, sighthounds were selectively bred for the abilities to hunt down prey by sight and speed and agility. By selecting for those traits, you end up with dogs that have very aerodynamic exaggerated bodies and further field of vision than other breed groups.
Pitbulls were bred for fighting, selecting dogs that had the might and gameness to be willing to fight to the death. You can see this in the typical characteristics of the breed type. Muscular, wide jaws, blocky, endurance, and resistance to pain.
And I know, every pit type owner will claim their pit is from a show line, it wasn’t bred from a fighting line, or that their particular breed hasn’t been used for fighting for a long time.
What they fail to realize is that behavior and appearance are linked. Selecting for the looks of a fighting dog will still select the behaviors and physiological characteristics of a fighting dog. By selecting for one, you’re selecting the other.
If there was a concentrated effort to remove the unprovoked aggression and deadliness of pitbulls, they wouldn’t look much like pitbulls anymore. Similar to how the modern English Bulldog doesn’t much look like the Old English Bulldog of the 1800s.
From dog breed groups to Belyaev’s foxes, we can see that behavior and appearance are linked. By selecting for one, you’re inadvertently selecting for the other. Form follows function, you can’t separate them.
So when #pitbulladvocates complain about “judging a dog based on looks alone”, remember the genes for behavior and appearance are linked, and we have Dmitry Belyaev to thank for that discovery.
