Alligator Science | Florida Man August 1

Alligators Have A Taste For Florida Man, According To Science | July 31

Tampa Bay: I’m sure you’ve noticed a number of stories from Florida about alligators — gators tossed into a fast-food restaurant, or turning up in someone’s bathtub, or crashing through a kitchen window. And, of course, there are the stories about people being chomped on by Florida’s official state reptile. It’s like the reptiles have a taste for Florida man.

Back when alligators were on the endangered list, nobody ever reported being bitten by one. They weren’t common enough. But once their population began to rebound, the number of reported bites began to climb.

A study by the Journal of Wildlife Management looked at Florida alligator bite reports dating back to 1971 concludes that gators mostly bite adult men who are not tourists. Adult men make the mistake of getting too close to small, man-made bodies of water where the reptiles like to hang out.

The study showed about three-quarters of the bites were by male gators, most of them going after what they thought was food. The researchers found only one instance in which a bite was associated with defense of eggs or young by an adult female alligator.

Florida has over 90 percent of all the bites from alligators in the United States.

The most surprising thing was that 42 percent of the reported bites occurred in unnamed water bodies — canals, retention ponds, that kind of thing, that are interwoven into residential and urban areas. Less surprising was that one third of the bites were connected to people feeding alligators, so that the gators began to associate people with food.

Males were more frequently bitten than females, and by a large margin: 81.4 percent to 18.5 percent respectively.

Thirty of the bite reports came from people who encountered gators on golf courses, Woodward said. That included one golf-ball diver who was bitten four times over 15 years.

It does seem as though these prehistoric beats have a taste for Florida man. To read more about the study, check out the full researched article at the Tampa Bay Times.