IT’A ALL IN THE BREED…OR IS IT?
By Cecile Ashen-Young, CPDT-KA
Claims of breed specific behaviour, or breed differences in behaviour, influence people’s perceptions and expectations of a breed and may therefore influence their investment in a specific breed. Indeed, most dog breeds have been selected over time for a specific function with the result that certain patterns of behaviour, including differences in problem-solving skills, have become more pronounced in certain breeds.
An example of this are the working breeds. Working dogs perform specialized tasks and are selected for their natural physical conformation and then nurtured to develop their behavioural confirmation. For example, early sled dogs were used to transport people and freight and were selected from a variety of breeds for their strength, durability, and speed. By contrast, the modern sled dog is used for racing and is acquired and culled for its speed, gait, endurance, and its higher threshold for aggressive or agonistic displays. This latter point is important because there is considerable social facilitation among the members of a sled dog team, and the dogs must be able to work together and to follow the cues of the driver. These dogs must have not only the heritable ability to learn, (i.e. the structural patterns that support learning), but also the innate behaviour patterns that facilitate social play and cooperation. The working sled dog is therefore selected for the inherited genes that give it the morphological and physiological potential to perform its task, and the right combination of innate motor patterns that facilitate training and performance (Coppinger & Coppinger, 2011; Coppinger & Schneider, 1995).
Sheepdogs, including livestock guarding dogs (LGD’s) and herding dogs, are another example of a working breed selected to display behaviours that are appropriate to specific work in a specific environment. LGD’s differ from herding dogs in that they cannot herd livestock, nor are they expected to. Instead they are used to protect livestock from predators. Their ability to do this better than any other breed is based on the weak development of predatory motor patterns and on the development of social relationships, during the critical period, in the environment they are expected to perform in. It is during this critical period, when the dog’s brain grows and nerve cells are connected in response to both internal and external signals, that the development of predatory motor patterns is closely monitored and interrupted. In other words, the genetic nature of the dog is stimulated by the environment it is raised in leading to the epigenetic development of both social and predatory behaviour patterns. Thus, LGDs that live from birth with the feel, sight, sound, and smell of livestock become well socialized to the herd they are expected to protect and direct dog social behaviours towards these animals (Coppinger & Coppinger, 2001). The behaviour of these dogs is therefore a result of an interaction between natural selection (random mating amongst a population of animals who are well adapted to the environment), genetics (or the processes that affect what and how a dog learns), the environment (with particular attention to the critical period), and artificial selection (or the modification of motor patterns by people) (Coppinger & Coppinger, 2001).
In a similar way, the herding dogs are selected for specific behaviour patterns directed at specific livestock. These dogs can be headers, heelers, or catch dogs depending on the development of their predatory motor patterns and on the degree to which they follow human cues. Motor patterns are both heritable and diverse: different breeds and even different dogs display motor patterns at different frequencies and intensities. In contrast to LGDs, herding dogs are not socialized with livestock, and modification of predatory motor patterns does not begin until after the onset of the eye, stalk, and chase sequence. The behaviour of both LGDs and herding dogs has been heavily influenced by selection for performance: this has changed the onset and development of innate motor patterns that affect performance (Coppinger & Schneider, 1995).
In short, the successful breeding of working dogs is a combination of natural and artificial selection and the considered manipulation of the environment in which they are raised. Natural selection works to remove, by natural culling, those dogs that are unable to cope with the environment in which they are expected to perform. Those dogs that do adapt inherit the genes that underlie innate motor patterns and learning ability. Artificial selection and environmental manipulation then take over by influencing the age of onset and offset of innate motor patterns, and by encouraging and directing the display of these motor patterns. (Jensen, 2007; Coppinger, 2001).
However, these patterns of behaviour actually represent a small percentage of the whole phenotype and there is considerable variation in behavioural expression within any given breed. This is because behaviour is a function of both genetics and environmental factors with the result that while individuals within a breed may share the same genes, their behavioural expression will vary based on the environment in which they are raised and in which they live. In addition, dog breeds have changed over time: these changes are influenced by geographic and cultural differences as well as selection for form over function. This is certainly true of many the working breeds that, despite being originally selected for a specific function in a given environment, may no longer be used for that function or be required to perform in the same type of environment. At the end of the day, dog breeds are artificial categories: breeds are derived from a mixture of ancestor populations and many breeds represent recreations of ancient breeds developed from a mix of other breeds making it impossible to construct an evolutionary tree of breeds. For these reasons, it is inadvisable to reliably define and categorize behaviour based on breed (Jensen, 2007; Coppinger, 1996; Miklosi, 2007).
So, is a dog’s behaviour all about the dog’s specific breed? The short answer is no. Breed is not a reliable predictor of behaviour. While certain physical characteristics and patterns of behaviour may be more pronounced in one type of breed over another, there is incredible behavioural diversity and overlap in behavioural characteristics both within and between breeds. Behaviour is a complex and continuous interplay between an individual’s genetics, its past experiences, and its current environment. When it comes to behaviour genetics do matter, but an individual dog’s behaviour will always vary based on the environment in which it is raised and in which it lives. References Coppinger, R. & Coopinger, L. (2001). Dogs. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Coppinger, R. & Schneider, R. (1995). Evolution of Working Dogs. In J. Serpell, The Domestic Dog, its evolution, behaviour, and interactions with people (pp. 21-50). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jensen, P. (2007). The Behavioural Biology of Dogs. Oxfordshire: CAB International. Miklosi, A. (2007). Dog Behaviour, Evolution, and Cognition. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc.
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