Alligators have a natural fear of humans. Any wild gator will flee from any human that gets too close to it. Only exceptions are if it's protecting it's nest.
Only time a non nesting wild gator will attack a human is if it fears that it is threatened and can't escape. It will defend itself as will almost any other animal.
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]The sad thing is, this was probably not the first time this alligator was approached by humans. Most likely, someone decided to feed it, and then it started to associate humans with food
This is a sad thing. The more contact gators have with humans the less fear they have of them. When they are feed by humans they start to expect to be feed when they see one. So if a human gets close, the gator thinks it's there to feed him and they attack.
So this is another example of us being in the wrong and the animal is blamed and punished.
Now I have a few comments about this case.
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]The deputies said that they could not shoot the animal because it was too dark and they might have hit Apgar,
Why would they want to shoot the gator it's doing us a favor by getting rid of another crackhead.
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]The gator is likely to be destroyed.
Again, why kill this animal. They should give it a medal. Since he has already shown that he is willing to attack and eliminate crackheads we should use tax payers money to dig a really nice pond in all crack neighborhoods and fill them with this gator and it's offspring.
I do have a troubling question about this case though. I think that the truth behind this case has not came out yet. Look at this quote.
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]Late Wednesday afternoon, trappers said that they had captured the alligator that had attacked Apgar.
My biggest question is what was Niki doing there. I think I have figured out exactly what happened in this case. Here is what I figured out.
Niki saw a naked man, she started chasing him and he saw a gator filled pond and felt he'd rather take his chances with the gators. I agree with him, by the way. The man jumped in the pond and the gator attacked the man when it was really going after what it thought was a small eel. After the attack Niki jumped in and wrestled the gator because she was chasing the same eel when the incident occurred. She won the fight with the gator and collected the eel and then turned over the gator to the authorities.
This is another example of a invasive species wiping out our natural species.