Wesley R. Elsberry
Posts: 4991
Joined: May 2002
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Lightning strikes are more common, but then again lightning can happen just about anywhere. I suspect that if corrected for geographical extent, lightning strike and alligator attack are probably in the same probability ballpark. If the distribution were uniform (which it isn't, according to the paper), there were about 7 attacks on average per year for the 1948-2004 period. The skew in attacks is toward increasing numbers in more recent years, a finding in line with increasing populations of alligators while habitat loss continues. This puts more alligators and people in proximity.
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"You can't teach an old dogma new tricks." - Dorothy Parker
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