> But, as Karlsson points out, “anyone who’s owned eight dogs from the same breed will tell you all about their different personalities”.
Even within a single litter, you can obviously track different personalities. The bigger dominant ones to the submissive runt. The more dominant or adventurous ones will come up to you while others remain a bit back and the runt remains all the way back.
> Particularly low was the connection between breed and how likely a dog was to display aggressive behaviour, which could have implications for how society treats “dangerous” dog breeds
Even within a litter, there will be more aggressive and less aggressive. And it isn't just "aggressiveness" that determines how society treats "dangerous" dog breeds, it's the size and ability to cause damage. Every pitbull owner will shout from the rooftops that a chihuahua is more aggressive than a pitbull and more people are bitten by chihuahuas than pitbulls. Of course they completely ignore the fact that a pitbull's bite will cause far more damage than a chihuahuas.
> Breeds as we think of them today — distinctive canines such as beagles, pugs and Labradors — are a by-product of more recent evolutionary meddling. Starting around 200 years ago, dog enthusiasts in Victorian England began inventing breeds by actively selecting for canine traits that they found aesthetically pleasing.
But dog breeds go back far thousands of years. Are they limiting dog breeds to just the last 200 years? Even so, certainly you can predict some behavioral differences between a labrador and a beagle. Of course being dogs they will share a lot of common behaviors like wagging the tail, sniffing each other, barking, etc, but certainly there are differences.
> But, on average, breed explained only around 9% of the variation in how a dog behaved, a number “much smaller than most people, including me, would have expected,” says Karlsson.
What did she expect? Dog breeds to behave 100% differently from each other?
> “We talk about breeds like they’re categorically different,” he says. “But in reality, that’s not the case.”
They are categorically different. Also why does the article talk about behavior then switch to personality then to temperament as if they all mean the same thing.
We have too many eaters in academia, media, etc. Nothing of value in the article. This study and article is a fine example of "publish or perish". People who have nothing to say or contribute but forced to say something and waste everyone's time because they need to justify their paychecks. This is why I support UBI. Cut down on the useless and wasteful white collar busy work.