Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Curious to see what everyone thinks about the coverage the two deaths in Florida this week are getting. No doubt it's a horrible tragedy, but is it up there with the floods in New England, the immigration debate, Iran and other (inter)national news? It's getting as much press time on the national networks.
It's been on 5 times an hour consitently, all day today.

Is this the shark attack media frenzy of 2003? Or justified?

One thing is for sure, the media is doing everything they can to portray gators as man-eaters, predators, evil and so on and so forth. One station even had the "scary" jaws like music on during the news segment. Gimme a break.

What do you think?

Again, I'm not arguing the tragic nature of this event. Just curious as to what other people think.

I've seen dozens of articles on the female jogger, but I haven't heard about a second attack. Was it just today?

Yes. I believe the body was found today (sunday) in pinellas county. They haven't confirmed 100% that the gator killed her, but both of her arms are missing and bite marks all over the body supposedly.

This is all I can find at the moment:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/F/FL_ALLIGATOR_ATTACK_FLOL-?SITE=FLTAM&SECTION=US

Fox news.com is saying that a third person in FL has now been killed by an alligator. This is getting nuts!

It is a tragedy that those people lost their lives, but it is appearant from all the stories that these people entered the Alligators terratory. Being a Florida native, everyone knows that if you swim in lakes and rivers you run the risk of snake bites, leeches, etc, swim in pools leave the swamps to the gators, and quit over developing natural spaces to build more townhouses. Over the last few years there has been a mass exodus of people from other parts of the country moving to the gulf south, if your going to live in a new area learn something about it before you go out and assume that its just like where ever you came from.
The truth is gators are like big frogs, they are very passive accept for the males during mating season and avoid confrontation at all costs. for instance one of the recent stories envolved an old women who stepped on a gator while watering her garden the gator bit her, and she sruck the gator with a garden hose until it hid in the bushses. As fuuny as it may seem, it demonstrates the truth, gators are passive, and unless fed and conditioned by people want to avoid human contact at all costs.
Lets not freak out! The gators today are no more different than they have been for 240 million years.

...I like the idea of a garden hose. I would think that would be enough of a reinforcement, to keep gators away. Rather than associating people with food, if you hit them with a good blast from a garden hose, that would associate people with a non-lethal, negative reinforcement. I like it!

MH

From what I know, the attacks happened when people were in the gators' prime element: water, or in the vicinity of.

Personally I think it's just a freak coincidence that 4 in a row took place, 3 of them lethal. However, often people are at fault, becaue tourists and locals enjoy feeding the gators. Humans become associated with food... there ya go.

Everytime you enter an element that isn't your own, you have to use common sense. Whether in the ocean or near a canal, or in a lake, there can always be the possibility of something bigger than you to view you as prey.