The causes of dog bites are poorly understood, but the topic causes quite a bit of emotion on all sides of the issue, be it dog owners, people who are afraid of dogs, or those that believe only certain species are dangerous.
Researchers at University of Liverpool wanted to study this issue, so they turned to YouTube, where many real dog bite videos are posted. Their research, published in journal Scientific Reports, shows that there is a consistent pattern of the types of dogs that end up biting humans and the types of humans that seem to attract this behavior.
From our point of view, using YouTube to study anything medically related is a pretty cool way of conducting research.
Hopefully this type of research will help us better understand what kinds of behaviors promote dog attacks and which seem to prevent them.
Study in Scientific Reports: Online videos indicate human and dog behaviour preceding dog bites and the context in which bites occur…