Exaggerated or false news about New Orleans is everywhere, including patently false reports of cannibalism, and a host of other things -- including innumerable reports of attacks and feasting on humans by alligators.
I've always been partial to alligators, having owned several, one of which I kept in my bathtub for years. While there's no question that they can seriously hurt you (especially if you tempt fate by feeding them or attempting to rescue a seized pet) for the most part they're inoffensive beasts. They'll leave you alone if you leave them alone.
OK, now that I've disclosed what might be gator sympathy (if not pro-gator bias) on my part, I'll try to address some of the gator rumors as fairly as I can.
I keep reading about gators feasting on people, and I'm very skeptical -- especially of stories like this:
A National Guard soldier said he saw an alligator jump out of the water on a residential street and bite a man's leg off. He said sharks were swimming around some houses.
Most of Katrina's victims are poor and black, unable to evacuate the area as the storm raced in, and the tragedy has highlighted the vast racial divide in the United States.
I think this is either highly exaggerated, or (more likely) pure disinformation. An alligator cannot bite a man's leg off. The way they hunt prey is to take hold, pull the prey underwater, and drown it. An alligator could in theory twist a leg off, but that could not be done by "jumping out of the water" but would require the alligator to pull the human prey into the water and then use its tail to spin around and around in a circular manner. Physically, an alligator is simply not designed to bite a leg off.
Feeding Habits and Patterns Who do they eat?
Alligators swallow their food whole without chewing it. Their strong digestive fluids allow them to digest turtle shells and bone. If an animal is too large to swallow, the alligator will let it rot a week. The alligator lacks the capability of many predators to tear flesh off a carcass or to chew. Alligator teeth are made for grabbing and holding, not for cutting and chewing. Alligators swallow their food whole. If the prey cannot be swallowed whole, the flesh has deteriorate almost to the point where it almost falls of the bone before the alligator can devour it. When dealing with larger prey, an alligator may shake its head in order to tear off a piece small enough to swallow.
Then there's this -- from the Urban Legends web site:
"Sharks and alligators are eating people in downtown New Orleans."
Nonsensical enough to be listed in Urban Legends. But like the unnamed "National guardsman" quoted in New Zealand, it's unsubstantiated. If there was anything to it, the "witnesses" would be talking about it in Fox and CNN and at least their names would be supplied in the stories.
Well, motherfuckers, the alligators are feasting on dead nigger and there isn't an Iraqi in sight.
I'm intrigued by this, as the only corroboration appears to be an assertion by musician Charmaine Neville, who doesn't actually state that she saw it happen; only that it happened:
Alligators were eating people. They had all kind of stuff in the water. They had babies floating in the water. We had to walk over hundreds of bodies of dead people, people that we tried to save from the hospices, from the hospitals and from the old folks' homes. I tried to get the police to help us but I realized we rescued a lot of police officers in the flat boat from the district police station. The boat, the guy who was driving the boat, he rescued a lot of them and brought them to get to places where they could be saved. We understood that the police couldn't help us, but we couldn't understand why the National Guard and them couldn't help us, because we kept seeing them, but they never would stop and help us.
Considering that she later refers to "millions of people" trying to get on the bus, and considering that she appears quite upset and excited in the video, I think it's quite possible that the part about alligators eating people was either repeated or even imagined. There's also the remark about shooting at helicopters to attract attention:
I want people to realize that we did not stay in the city so that we could steal and loot and commit crimes. A lot of those young men lost their minds because the helicopters would fly over us and they wouldn't stop. And it came to a point where these young men were so frustrated that they did start shooting. They weren't trying to get the helicopters. They thought maybe if they heard the gunfire, they would stop then. But that didn't help us. No one helped us."
If we assume this is true, I'd argue that people who would shoot at helicopters in frustration might very well imagine or exaggerate stories of alligators eating people.
It's very unlikely that alligators would be eating humans in New Orleans.
Alligators, unlike crocodiles, do not see humans as a food source. If you want to see alligators, you have to be very quiet and paddle softly. In Louisiana, alligator attacks on humans in the water are nearly non-existent. We have kayaked the Louisiana swamps for over 7 years and have never had any problem or felt threatened by an alligator.
Another reason is that alligator populations are believed to have been harmed by Hurricane Katrina. Their nests are drowned, and while they may be disoriented enough to swim into the city, they are shy by nature and if anything the hurricane would make them less, not more aggressive.
Certainly, it is possible that dead bodies have eaten by alligators, but I haven't seen confirmation in the form of a single substantiated story. A nameless guardsman is not a reliable source, and I'd need to hear more details from Charmaine Neville before I'd consider her story hard evidence. If she'd really seen this happening, why didn't she say so specifically? Was she reciting secondhand information? She sounded extremely (and understandably) distraught, and it's possible she saw an alligator or two in the water.
I'm not saying it isn't possible that a corpse might be eaten by an occasional scavenging alligator. But people are not normally their diet, and I just don't think alligators stressed by a hurricane are likely to appear in large numbers in a residential area in highly polluted water. I think the stories are being hyped.
And I think it will continue to be hyped, because people love this stuff. And few will defend the lowly gator.
I will, because I think they're wonderful creatures.
I know that a lot of people think alligators are creepy and awful and therefore don't deserve the benefit of the doubt. But I'd just like something more in the way of proof than second hand reports, or statements like "we'll never find the thousands of missing people because the alligators ate them all!"
Even people who hate gators ought to welcome a chance to really get the goods on them.
BATON ROUGE, La., Sept 8 - Estimates of the death toll from Hurricane Katrina have run as high as 10,000 but the actual body count so far is much lower and officials who feared the worst now hope the dire predictions were wrong.
The recovery of Katrina's victims speeded up in the last two days. As of Thursday, Mississippi had recorded 201 deaths and Louisiana 118, while other affected states had much lower numbers.
...
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, taking the lead in the recovery, has brought 25,000 body bags to the Gulf region. A morgue in St. Gabriel, Louisiana, is capable of processing 140 corpses a day and officials have formed a plan to handle in excess of 5,000 bodies.
....
In the rural areas east of St. Bernard Parish, some bodies will never be found because alligators will have taken them away, locals said.
I am not suggesting that anyone would be so cruel as to want dead bodies to number in the thousands. However, human egos being what they are, people don't like to be proved wrong -- and saying "the gators did it" offers a convenient way of saving face. Besides, who's going to defend these horrible creatures? (NAMBLA is more popular.)
posted by Eric on 09.08.05 at 08:25 PM
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The style of what you wrote here! (once again) An alligator in your bathtub. Many years ago, at a time when I was just moving into an apartment in Oakland, CA., when I was in a rather anti-bookish mood, and even more of a lazy slob than I am now, I had a pile of books in my bathtub for about a week before I finally put them in shelves. Over the years, I have been improving the order in which I shelve my books.
Anyway....! Back to alligators. Most interesting what you wrote. Not as ferocious as I had thought. Never met one, so I would never have known. I must confes, however, that having my leg twisted off sounds more painful than bitten off. Still, even that example shows that they don't go around biting people. Once again, the styles of the titles of your posts: "How About A Little Gator Aid?" All this reminds me of Alligator Control and "The Double Life of Henry Fyfe". I still remember the theme song of that old show. And that reminds me of "I Led Three Lives". The style....
As you say, a crocodile is much fiercer. Crocodiles appear quite frequently in Egyptian mythology as a beast to be feared.
A crocodile is a different animal entirely. Vicious, aggressive, and voracious. The problem is that when people see crocodiles feasting on humans in the Nile, they assume the same thing goes on in the Everglades.
Albert the Alligator was a friend of Pogo the Possum. I hope you remember that strip by Walt Kelley, it had style! Our Mama used to say "See you later alligator." She also used to call hamburgers "hangaburgers". Last night, we celebrated her birthday.
Gators are picky about the water they inhabit, and would not willingly spend any time in the raw sewage and chemical soup that covered New Orleans. Besides Gators big enough to devour pieces of humans
Dallas · September 19, 2005 09:47 PM
Gators are picky about the water they inhabit, and would not willingly spend any time in the raw sewage and chemical soup that covered New Orleans. Besides Gators big enough to devour pieces of humans are very, very rare. They are an endangered species after all.
The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler
Don?t bang your head!
The style of what you wrote here! (once again) An alligator in your bathtub. Many years ago, at a time when I was just moving into an apartment in Oakland, CA., when I was in a rather anti-bookish mood, and even more of a lazy slob than I am now, I had a pile of books in my bathtub for about a week before I finally put them in shelves. Over the years, I have been improving the order in which I shelve my books.
Anyway....! Back to alligators. Most interesting what you wrote. Not as ferocious as I had thought. Never met one, so I would never have known. I must confes, however, that having my leg twisted off sounds more painful than bitten off. Still, even that example shows that they don't go around biting people. Once again, the styles of the titles of your posts: "How About A Little Gator Aid?" All this reminds me of Alligator Control and "The Double Life of Henry Fyfe". I still remember the theme song of that old show. And that reminds me of "I Led Three Lives". The style....
As you say, a crocodile is much fiercer. Crocodiles appear quite frequently in Egyptian mythology as a beast to be feared.