The City of New York requires by law that all dog owners submit a license to the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The law also requires that owners update their license each year; therefore, these licenses can give a fairly accurate picture of the City of New York’s canine population. Using a data set of dog licenses available from 2016, the below visualizations seek to provide better insight into the canine population of New York.
The heatmap above shows the dog population by borough and also includes information about the most popular breeds by borough. Manhattan has by far, the largest dog population with 42,607 licensed dogs. It is the followed by Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island respectively. Among all of the boroughs, Yorkshire Terrier ranks as the most popular dog breeds. However, each borough varies among the second and third most popular dog breeds.
The number of dogs in each borough does not appear to correlate with the human population. Despite having the largest dog population in 2016, Manhattan ranked as only the third most populous borough in 2010. Furthermore, the incidence of dog bites was highest among the three boroughs with the highest population of dogs: Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn. Although, reporting’s of dog bites were slightly higher in Queens this may be related to a variety of factors and may not indicate that dogs are more aggressive or actually bite more frequently in this borough.