Genetics of Aggression, Fear and Sociability in Everyday Life of Swedish Dogs

Abstract

Most potential dog owners are looking for a non-aggressive, non-fearful, social and easily trained dog that functions well in everyday life. Despite this, most studies of genetic components for behavior traits have mainly focused on analyzing results from behavior tests and not everyday behavior data. The aim of this study was to estimate genetic parameters for aggression, fear, sociability and trainability in everyday life by using a questionnaire to assess information of the dog's everyday behavior. The genetic analysis included 3128 records distributed over 14 breeds. The effect of breed, sex and age were adjusted for in the estimations of genetic parameters. The estimated heritabilities ranged between 0.08 and 0.38, with the highest heritability found for human-directed play interest. Positive genetic correlations were found between aggression and fear traits. Sociability traits showed a negative genetic correlation with both aggression and fear traits.

Published in

Title: Proceedings of the 10th World Congress of Genetics Applied to Livestock Production
Publisher: WCGALP

Conference

10th World Congress of Genetics Applied to Livestock Production

SLU Authors

• Eken Asp, Helena

  • Department of Animal Biosciences, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Arvelius, Per

  • Department of Animal Biosciences, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Fikse, Freddy

  • Department of Animal Biosciences, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Nilsson, Katja

  • Department of Animal Biosciences, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Strandberg, Erling

  • Department of Animal Biosciences, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Genetics and Breeding

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/63372