Man Fleeing Police Eaten By Alligator

[Lord MJ]

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/st ... _1114.html

MICCOSUKEE TRIBE INDIAN RESERVATION, Fla. — A man who jumped into a lake to flee police was killed by an alligator more than 9-feet long, officials said Tuesday.

The man, whose name has not been released, was allegedly burglarizing a vehicle in the parking lot of the Miccosukee Resort and Convention Center on Thursday. He ran when police arrived at the scene, said Dexter Lehtinen, one of the tribe's police legal advisors.

Tribal police divers searched for the man that night, then again Friday morning and afternoon. During the third dive, the body was recovered. It bore alligator teeth marks on the upper torso.

The Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner Department said the cause of death was an alligator attack.

An accomplice in the alleged burglary has been arrested. The Miccosukee tribe, which is not obligated to follow Florida's open records laws, declined to release his name. Without a name, the Miami-Dade state attorney's office was unable to comment on whether the man has been charged.

The alligator believed to be responsible for the death has been killed. A coroner was scheduled to examine the 9-foot-3 reptile Wednesday for human hair or skin, said Brian Wood, owner of All American Gator Products, which is storing the gator in a cooler for now. It will then be incinerated or buried, he said.

A sign at the lake warns people: "Danger Live Alligators." Wood said in other alligator habitats, signs also warn people not to feed the creatures.

"They become too comfortable being around humans and they equate humans to food," Wood said. "Generally if a gator sees a person, he goes the other way, he goes down, he hides. This gator was aggressive, not afraid of people."

Darwin Award Candidate?

[FSTargetDrone]

Bah, this man wasn't "eaten." Merely killed by being bit.

[General Zod]

Darwin Award Candidate?

He's a veritable shoe-in for the Darwins. Especially if he didn't have any kids.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Gives new meaning to "Out of the Fire, Into the Frying Pan."

Now, it's "Away from the cops, Into the Alligator's Stomach".

[The Vortex Empire]

Wow, now this is funny. Someone send it to the Darwin Awards.

[General Zod]

Someone send it to the Darwin Awards.

Way ahead of you.

[Broomstick]

Bah, this man wasn't "eaten." Merely killed by being bit.

Debatable.

'Gators will typically take a few bites (actually, they grab on, then spin under water to tear off bits) then stash the remainder of the corpse underwater for later snacking. Sort of like how some large cats will drag corpses into trees for safekeeping.

If the bite marks are on the upper torso I suppose it's possible the reptile twisted his head off and ate that, but saved the rest for later. Grabbing the face/head is a tactic gators are known to use.

So... even if he wasn't entirely eaten immediately, he may have been partially eaten and it's pretty certain the gator intended to come back for later munching.

[Kanastrous]

Seems terribly unfair, to have killed the alligator.

Saved the state the expense of a trial, that gator did...

[Lord MJ]

Seems terribly unfair, to have killed the alligator.

Saved the state the expense of a trial, that gator did...

Only problem is once a Gator gets the taste for human flesh or associates humans with food, they are much more likely to attack other humans in the future.

[Ritterin Sophia]

I Fought the Law and the ... gator won.
I Fought the Law and the ... gator won

[andrewgpaul]

Also, "burglarizing"? What the fuck? What's wrong with "burgling"?

[Illuminatus Primus]

Burgling? Is that British English?

[Androsphinx]

Yes. Though ironically enough "burglarise" seems to have been the original verb, with "burgle" being derived backwards from "burgler". One to the Yanks, methinks

[Lord Poe]

Miccosukee tribe? What an unfortunate name. Although I'm sure it means something grand in their language.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

'Gators will typically take a few bites (actually, they grab on, then spin under water to tear off bits)

I thought the spinning underwater was to drown the prey. The spinning allows the gator to take a breath when it needs to, but doesn't allow its victim to reach the surface.

[Broomstick]

That doesn't hurt, either, but 'gators can hold their breath a pretty long time by human standards. If it just pulled you to the bottom and sat on you, you'd drown long before the reptile would.

There's no reason the grip-and-spin can't have a dual purpose, you know.

[Havok]

Seems terribly unfair, to have killed the alligator.

Saved the state the expense of a trial, that gator did...

Only problem is once a Gator gets the taste for human flesh or associates humans with food, they are much more likely to attack other humans in the future.

So. We don't kill people that eat gators once. Fuck that. There are signs. People around there know there are gators there. It's not like it's going to go hunting people.

[Shogoki]

So. We don't kill people that eat gators once.

Gator meat makes good eating.

[Sidewinder]

Talk about just deserts-- or in this case, just desserts.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Seems terribly unfair, to have killed the alligator.

Saved the state the expense of a trial, that gator did...

Only problem is once a Gator gets the taste for human flesh or associates humans with food, they are much more likely to attack other humans in the future.

That is a load of bullshit. An alligator is an opportunistic predator and it will take anything that presents itself as prey. The reason you dont feed the animals is because it makes the animal more comfortable around humans, and thus more likely to consider one a potential food source.

If you jump in the water with a 3 meter long alligator, it WILL view you as potential prey. The key is to stay away from 3 meter long alligators.

I object to killing predators in general. Even if they are "menacing" people. Frankly the alligator was there first and humans are not so special that they should punish the animal for doing what comes naturally to it. If it eats your dog, fence your fucking yard. If it eats your idiot five year old, that is very sad, but maybe you shouldnt have let the kid go swimming or should not have have built your house on recently drained swamp land. The gator is not making an informed choice. You are. Face the consequences mammal bitches.

I thought the spinning underwater was to drown the prey. The spinning allows the gator to take a breath when it needs to, but doesn't allow its victim to reach the surface.

Alligators can stay under water for well over half an hour. It spins to rip off chunks of meat or kill the prey through trauma. It can drown a person easily enough.

Gator meat makes good eating.

Their populations are also not as stable as we like to think due to habitat destruction and the fact that we are removing the sexually mature individuals to protect stupid people.

Here is the thing. We destroy their habitat and then kill the displaced animals because they are "menacing" people if they are over a meter in length, and relocate the little ones. The problem with that is that relocation does not actually work with reptiles. The animal either finds its way back home or dies within a year. of relocation.

Fuck that. Either accept the occassional gator cooling off in your pool and keep the kids indoors, dont build on drained everglade, or use a public pool.

[Singular Intellect]

I object to killing predators in general. Even if they are "menacing" people. Frankly the alligator was there first and humans are not so special that they should punish the animal for doing what comes naturally to it. If it eats your dog, fence your fucking yard. If it eats your idiot five year old, that is very sad, but maybe you shouldnt have let the kid go swimming or should not have have built your house on recently drained swamp land. The gator is not making an informed choice. You are. Face the consequences mammal bitches.

Ah, so animals in the wild are allowed to declare themselves terroritory, defend themselves and their young with lethal force, but if humans do it we should feel guilty?

Fuck that. We don't need to go on a killing sprees because we're so successful compared to other lifeforms on this planet, but that doesn't mean we don't have the right to do exactly what others animals do as I outlined above.

We don't have to apologize for being a relatively successful species, and it's rather stupid of you to suggest we should. The only thing we should be held accountable for is being aware of what serious problems we bring upon ourselves and not addressing them intelligently. Not for doing what animals do naturally.

[Ritterin Sophia]

Ah, so animals in the wild are allowed to declare themselves terroritory, defend themselves and their young with lethal force, but if humans do it we should feel guilty?

If you were declaring your territory, defending yourself, or your young. Then there should be no problem as long as you don't make the alligator confortable around humans and you likewise give it a wide berth.

Fuck that. We don't need to go on a killing sprees because we're so successful compared to other lifeforms on this planet, but that doesn't mean we don't have the right to do exactly what others animals do as I outlined above.

No, no you're not, you're going into an area unsuitable for humans changing it to a human tropical paradise, and then getting surprised when that gator decides to stay where it's been for the last couple years, and eats one of your pets that you let out around that nice clear clean water called a pool. Humans are making their homes into prime crocodile realistate.

We don't have to apologize for being a relatively successful species, and it's rather stupid of you to suggest we should. The only thing we should be held accountable for is being aware of what serious problems we bring upon ourselves and not addressing them intelligently. Not for doing what animals do naturally.

No it's moronic of you to suggest we should act like animals, we are above such things. What you are suggesting is that someone go into a bullshark infested river and be surprised when an hour later they're missing a leg, in risk of bleeding to death, and need to be rushed to a hospital.

[Alyrium Denryle]

I object to killing predators in general. Even if they are "menacing" people. Frankly the alligator was there first and humans are not so special that they should punish the animal for doing what comes naturally to it. If it eats your dog, fence your fucking yard. If it eats your idiot five year old, that is very sad, but maybe you shouldnt have let the kid go swimming or should not have have built your house on recently drained swamp land. The gator is not making an informed choice. You are. Face the consequences mammal bitches.

Ah, so animals in the wild are allowed to declare themselves terroritory, defend themselves and their young with lethal force, but if humans do it we should feel guilty?

Fuck that. We don't need to go on a killing sprees because we're so successful compared to other lifeforms on this planet, but that doesn't mean we don't have the right to do exactly what others animals do as I outlined above.

We don't have to apologize for being a relatively successful species, and it's rather stupid of you to suggest we should. The only thing we should be held accountable for is being aware of what serious problems we bring upon ourselves and not addressing them intelligently. Not for doing what animals do naturally.

Strawman. Either that or your understanding of animal behavior is childish at best.

Killing an alligator that eats someone is not defending that individual. It is an act of spite. Something no other animal can be empirically demonstrated to engage in. if you are defending your offspring or yourself from the direct threat of said alligator, then by all means. However going out to kill the animal after the fact because you made an irresponsible choice is not morally right.

As for territory. No other animal utterly destroys the territory they inhabit so as to make it inhospitable to all but insects and the most hardy of birds and the occasional lizard. Other organisms certainly modify theri habitats, but when they do this they do so in a way that is integrated into the local ecosystem. When alligators for example create gator holes they serve as life-givers to the entire ecological community during periods of drought. There are entire communities that grow around beaver dams, ant nests, and termite mounds. When humans move into territory not only do they bulldoze everything in their path, plant non-native flora, and introduce organisms that would be bad enough for the local ecosystem oin their own, but are artificially supported by humans and thus do not ever reach an equilibrium with their prey species. But we get pissy when the organisms we displace have no where to go.

The simple fact is, we do NOT do what other animals do. We dont even reach an equilibrium between our environment and our population size. We should feel guilty.

We don't have to apologize for being a relatively successful species, and it's rather stupid of you to suggest we should. The only thing we should be held accountable for is being aware of what serious problems we bring upon ourselves and not addressing them intelligently. Not for doing what animals do naturally.

No, we dont have to apologize for being successful in evolutionary terms. What we do need to apologize for is the rampant destruction we cause. What we need to apologize for are the horrendous amounts of resources we consume, for are the organisms whos entire species we have systematically wiped out and for the ecosystems we have destroyed. All of these things have intrinsic value and the fact that we destroyed them is a travesty. Normally they would have undergone the gradual change of evolutiion and adapted to changing environments, soem would have gone extinct due to competition with their own evolutionary progeny. What we need to apologize for is placing selective pressures on countless organisms that were so high they were erased from natural history. We need to apologize for being a mass extinction event. They happen naturally, but not consciously. The universe is not conscious, it does not choose. We do. We are responsible for our moral choices, and we have been making bad ones for a long long time.

I find your hubris amazing. To think we only have moral duties to ourselves. That the entirety of life on this planet is beholden to the whims of a late coming social primate. Sorry, that does not fly. I am not sure what should necessarily go in the place of that moral framework, if you can call it that, but I know that that is bullshit.

[Darth Wong]

The simple fact is, we do NOT do what other animals do. We dont even reach an equilibrium between our environment and our population size. We should feel guilty.

Actually, we do exactly what other animals do. Most animal populations are not in perfect equilibrium either, and it is quite typical of a successful species to multiply until it harms or even destroys other species to the point that it ruins its own environment and suffers a population collapse.

No, we dont have to apologize for being successful in evolutionary terms. What we do need to apologize for is the rampant destruction we cause. What we need to apologize for are the horrendous amounts of resources we consume, for are the organisms whos entire species we have systematically wiped out and for the ecosystems we have destroyed.

Apologize to whom? I think we should apologize to ourselves, because the natural process of an aggressive species reaching equilibrium is to use up its available resources to the point that its death rate increases and equals its replacement rate. We want to avoid this outcome because it's so unpleasant, but we won't. In other words, we will reach population equilibrium, but only when we have so badly fucked up our environment that we are dying as fast as we're being born.

I find your hubris amazing. To think we only have moral duties to ourselves. That the entirety of life on this planet is beholden to the whims of a late coming social primate. Sorry, that does not fly. I am not sure what should necessarily go in the place of that moral framework, if you can call it that, but I know that that is bullshit.

Since the entire concept of morality is a man-made concept, created by ancient pre-historic people for the prosperity and survival of their tribal units, why does it strike you as so absurd that most systems of morality exclusively serve the purposes of man?

There are perfectly sound humanistic reasons to limit our population growth and environmental impact. There is no need to appeal to your gut-level feeling that morality should not exclusively serve the interests of human society.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Actually, we do exactly what other animals do. Most animal populations are not in perfect equilibrium either, and it is quite typical of a successful species to multiply until it harms or even destroys other species to the point that it ruins its own environment and suffers a population collapse.

Of course the equilibrium is dynamic and fluctuates with abiotic and biotic factors. The vast majority of the time though, one species does not drive its prey species to extinction due to a negative feedback loops. The prey population drops, the predator population drops as a result allowing the prey to recover. With resource competition one or both species will typically specialize to inhabit a more specific niche and they go extinct only in the sense that they diverge and stop being what they used to be.

What we do is somewhat different. We arbitrarily decide that a species does not please us (or pleases us too much) and wipe it off the face of the earth. Our use of them and their habitat is not limited in any conceivable way. For example, we do not kill what we need to survive, we slaughter entire species to use their fur for decoration. Demand for these goods is mostly independent of our population and not as subject to the same feedback loops that regulate non-human predation.

Apologize to whom? I think we should apologize to ourselves, because the natural process of an aggressive species reaching equilibrium is to use up its available resources to the point that its death rate increases and equals its replacement rate. We want to avoid this outcome because it's so unpleasant, but we won't. In other words, we will reach population equilibrium, but only when we have so badly fucked up our environment that we are dying as fast as we're being born.

I mean apologize in the figurative sense. Of course we should avoid it for humanistic reasons. I also feel we should avoid it for non-humanistic reasons. If for no other reason than because other organisms are capable of suffering the same fate and it is indeed unpleasant. We can focus on individual animals and have duties toward aggregates by extension. That is of course if, as a utilitarian one wishes to be consistent. If the reason harming humans is wrong is because it causes them to experience suffering, then we should not harm animals without necessity because it causes them suffering.

I on the other hand find that suffering vs. pleasure is not the only moral criteria. There is distributive justice as well as other principles. Including but not limited to the intrinsic value of nature. We have duties toward natural entities in the same way we do toward people. And just like when we make decisions regarding people,. there are tradeoffs, and nature does not always win those tradeoffs. But for thousands of years we have not even taken nature into account in the consideration.

Since the entire concept of morality is a man-made concept, created by ancient pre-historic people for the prosperity and survival of their tribal units, why does it strike you as so absurd that most systems of morality exclusively serve the purposes of man?

for the same reason I find it absurd that those ancient moral frameworks only applied to their tribal units. It is inconsistent. From a strictly act utilitarian perspective (which is only a portion of the hideously complex ethical system I have adopted) suffering is suffering. It does not matter if it is a lizard or a human being. The only difference is the degree of suffering capable of being experienced by the organism.

That is only the tip of the iceberg though. Looking at the issue metaethically, not only are ethics functional, the result of natural selection on the ideas present in population groups, but they are also largely subjective. The reason the notion that suffering is bad resonates with us is because we subjectively experience suffering. Suffering decreases the survivability of a social groups so prohibitions on spreading suffering grow within the population. There is very little separating the suffering of a human from the suffering of a chimp. If we wish to be consistent we should work to avoid chimp suffering. At this point not because it would increase our own survival, but because the chimp's suffering is similar to our own in its own right. On down the line to lizards and even insects. Though the capacity to experience suffering is probably markedly reduced in the arthropods.

Other ethical concerns go through a similar process. Distributive justice, intrinsic value etc. All of these are concepts that have helped us survive as populations and indeed as a species. And they can easily be applied to non humans and consistency demands that that be the case. If you have no desire to be consistent that is another matter. But I do.