The actual situation is rather bizarrely bipolar. Alligators are present in virtually every fresh water situation throughout Florida. They live in springs, lakes, rivers, cattle ponds, catchment basins, canals, and water hazards at the golf course. In most of those places the alligators remain discretely out of sight, at least during the day. Water is their shelter and their camouflage, and they remain hidden because they perceive humans to be a threat. But come back at night with a powerful flashlight, and see how many pairs of bright red eyes you will find! So they are present almost everywhere, in numbers, but only occasionally noticeable.
Nile crocodiles evolved in a place where little food may be available for months and months, but then suddenly and for a brief time huge furry meat-things come along and literally jump into their mouths. So these crocs are used to seeing animals on the riverbank as potential food, and even today eat some considerable number of humans per annum. Alligators have no wildebeest migration to influence their feeding behavior. Mostly they eat small, slow moving things like garfish, catfish, turtles, and snails. They even use their broad shovel-like snout to scoop up and ingest mud from the bottom, digesting the insects, worms, crawdads, and other goodies in the mud. They rarely give chase even to the birds and raccoons that are frequently observed literally climbing over and around them, apparently having drawn the evolutionary conclusion that the calories expended in unsuccessful pursuits are greater than the calories gained by rare successful captures. Rarely, I said – not never. This poor child, and the other human fatalities recorded, represent those rare instances.
While most remain hidden, numbers of alligators are commonly viewed daytimes at many of the springs and clear lakes in central Florida. Here and in a few other places they become inured to the presence of people and will commonly lie basking “on the far bank” while crowds of men, women, and children swim and splash nearby. I’ve never heard of a human fatality in a Florida spring, where crowds of people are exposed to numbers of visible alligators.
So how should one properly assess the risk due to alligators in this instance? Did Disney deliberately downplay the danger, to maintain the “Magic” of the Kingdom? Did they assess the danger and decide it was slight, taking instruction from the numerous public springs in the general vicinity? Perhaps the No Swimming injunction was indeed offered more because of brain eating amoeba, or deep water without lifeguards, or boat traffic, or other totally unrelated matters, and they gave no thought to alligator danger at all, being as much inside the “Disney Bubble” as their patrons. Should Disney have had signs and a fence? Do our springs need squads of alligator hunters? Should Floridians all move to Utah?
I live in Florida, I work here – and I work professionally with alligators (among other creatures). I’ve been called to do interviews numerous times in the past several days, and I’m always asked for a simple, straightforward “take-away lesson” the public and officialdom can use to protect residents and visitors from harm caused by alligators. And I ruefully reply that there just isn’t a simple answer.
