A woman from South Carolina was killed by an alligator on May 1, according to the police. The unidentified victim encountered the alligator on Kiawah Island. The police were called and the officer shot and killed the alligator.
Gator attack
According to the police, they were alerted at 5 p.m. and the unidentified woman was already dead when they arrived in the scene. The police did not provide additional details about the attack. Unfortunately, this is the third time in the past four years that a person has been killed by an alligator in South Carolina.
In 2016, a 90-year-old woman walked out of a Charleston nursing home and was killed. In August 2018, a 45-year-old woman walking her dog was fatally attacked on Hilton Head Island. Before the recorded attacks, South Carolina had never recorded a person killed by an alligator.
An increasing number of incidents
According to the journal Wilderness and Environmental Medicine, there has been an increase in the number of alligator attacks in America. From 1948 to August 1, 2004, there have been 376 injuries and 15 deaths have been reported in the United States as a result of alligator encounters. The number of calls regarding alligator sightings and the alligator population is also increasing.
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The human population is slowly invading the natural habitat of alligators with numerous land developments, thus the number of attacks and nuisance complaints has increased.
However, alligators do not often attack humans, you are more likely to get bitten by a dog or get killed by a cow than to get attacked by an alligator. There are currently 5 million alligators in the United States and they live throughout the Southeast, from Texas to North Carolina. But most of them are in Florida where 1.3 million alligators currently live.
Alligators can be dangerous but if you leave them alone, they will more than likely want to leave you alone too. Alligators can be vicious since they are technically predators. They are ambush predators because they are good at camouflage and only their little eyes can be seen above water.
They eat mammals like waterbirds, raccoons, turtles, and deer. Alligators sneak up to their prey and then capture them fast. Alligators do not move around a lot, and they won't attack as long as you respect their personal space. But what do you need to do if you get attacked by an alligator?
If an alligator charges after you, the first step is to run as fast as you can. Alligators are very fast and they can run up to a speed of 11 mph, but they can't sustain that very long. If ever it is too late to run and the alligator already sunk its teeth into you, you need to fight back.
Do not pry open the jaws of the gator since it has a bite that weighs 3,000 pounds. Animal experts say that while fighting back, the right way to do it is to smack the sensitive snout of the gator and gouge the eyes as hard as you can so that the alligator will let you go.
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