OMG! I've got to find some way to weasel out of this box I've got myself in... 
, so here goes:
Yes, alligators do make more sense -- although make no mistake, there are (or have been)
crocodiles at Ding Darling on Sanibel.
Each year in Florida, we have one or two instances of a human getting severely injured or killed by an alligator. Alligators are top-level predators, and they are killing machines. Make no mistake about it, a four-foot alligator can ruin your day, and any adult alligator (7+ ft) can easily kill any human. They are so much faster and so much stronger than humans, that it is really no contest physically. Psychologically is different. They can be bluffed, but not beaten.
Normally, if a human is acting like a human, there is no attack. Alligators -- in the wild, especially -- seem to pay little attention to humans, other than being afraid of us because we are so much taller than they are.
Attacks usually occur in a situation as described where someone is walking a dog alongside a lake, an alligator goes after the dog, and the pet owner tries to save their pet. In that situation, an alligator would attack anything trying to take its prey away from it.
The other situation, also as described, occurs with people without pets along shorelines. If an alligator has a nest, or babies, they will defend them; and that includes defending them against people who are doing nothing "wrong."
Although it makes great hype for people in the entertainment business, alligators are NOT ambush hunters. They are opportunistic hunters who will lay alongside turtles for a week and then eat one when their walnut-sized brain says, "Eat the turtle."
We hate to see tragedies occur, but they are an unavoidable consequence of building in wild animal habitat. As Florida continues to grow, we will have more and more of these confrontations, and in the long run the wild aniimals will always lose. If we are going to have development, we have to make development safe for
us, and that inevitably means the destruction of some wild animals who have the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Also just for the record, American Alligators are
also a protected species under both the U.S. and Florida Endangered Species Acts. They are called a "species of special concern" under Florida law, and they're protected by both laws because of their similarity of appearance to the endangered American Crocodile. Therefore, you can rest assured if you watch the NG piece, you are going to learn that the people hunting those alligators are licensed trappers, and the taking of the animals was expressly approved by both the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission -- the two entities charged with administering the two laws.
