Okay, here's an initial very rough guesstimate on a comparison:



First the data:



There are currently approximately 77.5 million dogs in the US. Depending on the source you look at, there are roughly 16-30 dogbite-related deaths in the US every year.



There are currently approximately 13.6 million reptiles in the US. In the period 1990-2008, there were 8 constrictor-related deaths.



Now some extrapolation from that data:



If there are 16-30 dogbite deaths every year, then in the period 1990-2008 (the period we have constrictor death data for), there were roughly 288-540 people killed by dogs in the US.



Comparing that number to the current dog population, you come up with .0000037-.000007 deaths per dog. (3.7-7.0 x 10(-6))



If there are 13.6 million reptiles in the US, I'm going to make a wild guess that 10% of those are constrictors. I could be way off here, I just dunno. So let's guess 1.36 million constrictors.



If we accept this number, then given the number of constrictor-related deaths we come up with .00000059 deaths per constrictor. (5.9 x 10(-7))



So our wild guess guesstimate indicates that there are roughly 10 times as many deaths per dog as there are deaths per constrictor. And this is probably an under-estimate, since it includes many dog breeds that have never been recorded as causing human death.



We would need much better numbers on specific breed populations and specific constrictor populations to make this anything reliable, but IMHO it's the kind of statistic that people ought to be trying to calculate in order to impress John Q. Public.
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0.1 Peruvian rainbow boa (Amaru)

2.0 Brazilian rainbow boas (TBA)

0.3 Honduran milksnakes (Chicchan, Chanir, Hari)

1.0 Thayeri kingsnake (TBA)

2.7 corns (Cetto, Tolosa, TBA)

1,000,000.1,000,000 other critters

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