Attacks of various species

I've noticed something, reading the various articles that people post in the news forum, about the general way that people tend to react to various types of animal attacks.
I spend alot of time reading about predatory animals, and many of them are very capable and frequently do, attack and sometimes even kill a human being, just like dogs do and have done in the past.

My favourite example is the shark bite vs the dog bite.
In the instance of a shark bite, most people are swimming in the water midning there own business when all of the sudden they are bitten by a shark. Typically these are just exploratory and the shark will leave after that first bite, but not always. In any event you require lots of stitches and in some severe cases will loose a limb. Many of these victims instead of harboring ill will against the shark actually learn to respect the animal and start to learn new facts about them.

In the case of a dog bite you can equally just be walking down the street and get bitten by a dog. You need to get bit a fair number of times by a dog, unless it's a very large dog, before it will equal the damage done by a shark bite... accept instead of trying to learn more about dogs to try and understand what provoked the dog, people cry bloody murder and demand that the dog be put down.

This strikes me as being a bit odd for the following reason

In both cases the animal was just doing what it thought was right, in essences dogs will be dogs and sharks will be sharks.
The sharks bite is worse, but these days more people react with understanding then malice. The dogs bite is significantly less severe however we resort to banning various breeds.

Now of course the number of dog vs. shark bites is not exactly proportionate, being as there is less then 100 shark attacks every year(96 in 2006, 62 unprovoked and 34 provoked), and to get the number of dog bites you'd likely need to add 4 more 0's to that.

So I'm just wondering why you guys think that is that a predatory in the sea, garners more respect then mans supposed best friend, in terms of people being bit?

My guess at the difference:

In the case of the shark bite, it is a person encroaching on the wild animal's habitat. People are often snorkeling/diving to "experience nature". And, well...they experience it .

Dogs are, because of what we have made them, required to live in our environment. They are domestic animals and they live in our homes, and therefore they have to abide by the rules of people.

Or something like that.

I think Boston Banker is on target.

Probably because way too many people see dogs as ""cute little humans in furry coats"" and expect them to behave mannerly like a human and when they dont it scares them but they have the power of revenge with the law on their side. A wild animal is a ""scary beast"" and often people are clueless as to what their behaviour should be like so then they want to go ahead and find out. Power over the familiar, fear of the unknown.

that is really interesting...i never thought about it like that.

But yeah, i agree with everyone else.

Also i think most people think sharks are dumb, while dogs are smart. I think people think that sharks are acting more out of an uncontrollable reflex, while dogs are putting more thought behind what they are doing...

The thing is, we don't expect sharks to cohabitate in our neighborhoods. Dogs are not humans, of course. They are dogs. But we as pet owners are expected to have them under control and see to the public safety of humans with respect to our pets. If we were to expect others to learn all about dogs, we would be asking the public to adapt to dogs instead of the other way around. It will never happen. Dogs simply do not have the same rights as humans and never will.

Now, let's take it a step farther and compare dog bites to human assaults . . .

That is an interesting though Renee but it comes down to, who would fund a ""jail"" for every dog that has bitten?? Not to mention the rehab part of it....and besides where would we get enough orange suits???

Most of society looks at dogs as ""just animals"" and not deserving of the same rights as humans

Hahah on the orange suits.