If you want to get technical, ALL dogs are hard wired to hunt and kill.
Feral packs of dogs can include Poodles to Pit Bulls and everything imaginable, in between.
We may have slightly, tenuously modified some of their behavior to suit our needs but at the day’s end, a Yorkie could survive quite well on its own, if it had to.
Any owner of any “nice, safe breed” deludes only themselves if they quietly romance that less than a wolf is laying at their feet.
As a dog person, rather than a “pet owner”, as an example, I never kid myself that my Ibizan Hounds “need” me in the least.
Turned loose in the mountains, they’d absolutely thrive as a fully functional, primitive pack.
I’m not sold on “hard wiring” [though it would more appropriately be “wet wiring”] because I’ve had Ibizans who had no interest in hunting yet were great guard dogs.
I’ve had Dobermanns who were lackadaisical about guarding but excelled at birding.
I had a German Shorthair who cared nothing for birding, preferring to constantly dig for imaginary ‘badgers’ or something.
My miniature Poodle thought she was a Malinois.
My dad’s insanely expensive “field champion hunting lines” Brittany wouldn’t point a bird to save his life.
All breeds have “inherent tendencies”.
Not all of them exhibit them.
If a breed is actually “hard wired”, *all* of them should exhibit the same traits.
Predisposition is not necessarily disposition.
Feral packs of dogs can include Poodles to Pit Bulls and everything imaginable, in between.
That is true of course, but nobody seems inclined to examine the varying thresholds at which different breeds engage in that behavior. If even a "gentle" dog is abandoned (say, discarded by a former owner out in a rural area), it will pack-up with other dogs to survive.
In recent years, though, there have been many stories involving Rottweilers or Pit Bulls that begin to show feral behavior immediately after escaping from their owners' back yards. Many of these incidents occur when two such dogs get loose together. With less aggressive breeds, that scenario would mostly threaten every fire hydrant and tree in the neighborhood. Unfortunately, the "bully breeds" often turn such a romp into a hunt - and they're not confined to menacing the area squirrels and cats. And they often do this despite being well-fed.
I really do think this - the proclivity towards pack behavior - is an area worthy of further study and discussion.