Snake Attacks Three-Year-Old Boy

Originally Posted by wcreptiles

A free roaming 18ft Retic is slightly different from you basic Lab. A dog is considered a domesticated pet where your snake is still a wild animal and should be confined to suitable cage and not be permitted to roam free; especially when children are left unattended. If the parents had this animal in a proper locked cage away from the children this would not have occurred; no charges filed, no story.

Personally I think you are wrong. Snakes mostly avoid human contact. Dogs are social creatures, they thrive for it because they are naturally pack animals. They also are known carriers for rabies thus make them a much bigger and more prone risk than an 18 or 80 foot snake ever will be. Add to the snake that most kids will avoid a large snake on sight versus interacting with a dog....also gives nod to my feeling the dog is the larger threat. Facts are facts, this is another form of social bias. A million dogs can attack maul and kill kids and society only seeks a few breeds to ban as scapegoats to cover that fact that dogs in fact still have wild instincts that drive them. Have one incidence of a reptile attack and let's ban them all.

Dogs are also domesticated - we spent the past 15,000 years selecting for animals which would interact with us with minimal problems.

The python, on the other hand, is a wild animal (at most 3-4 generations removed from the wild), and used to eating anything it can stuff down its sizable throat.

The difference in number of incidents is hardly indicative - there are FAR more dogs than large pythons in the US, and we spend FAR more time interacting with them (properly kept pythons spend 99% of their time in their cage). The real metric for relative danger is attacks per animal per interaction-hour.

Now, find me *any* large snake keeper who hasn't gotten bitten at least once. Maybe you'll find a handful, but most of us have been bitten, even if just a quick nip from a moderate-sized animal. Find the percentage of dog owners who've been bitten. It'll be much lower, in spite of much more time with the animals.

Comparing raw numbers is just a terrible method of parsing out differences, in the end.

Originally Posted by suzuki4life

Personally I think you are wrong. Snakes mostly avoid human contact. Dogs are social creatures, they thrive for it because they are naturally pack animals. They also are known carriers for rabies thus make them a much bigger and more prone risk than an 18 or 80 foot snake ever will be. Add to the snake that most kids will avoid a large snake on sight versus interacting with a dog....also gives nod to my feeling the dog is the larger threat. Facts are facts, this is another form of social bias. A million dogs can attack maul and kill kids and society only seeks a few breeds to ban as scapegoats to cover that fact that dogs in fact still have wild instincts that drive them. Have one incidence of a reptile attack and let's ban them all.

I do not support a ban on any reptile nor did I suggest that; I support responsible keepers so we can avoid negative press from an incident such as this. But I do not support free roaming large constrictors under any circumstances; especially when you have unsupervised small children around.

I believe in well made secure locked/latched escape proof cages specifically made for the occupants. I believe if you have small children and reptiles, one of the two should be kept in a separate locked room away from the other; mutual protection.

I also don't think a small child will always avoid a snake if the child has seen it's parent interacting with snakes. Remember Dr. Sean Bush's 2 year old son that picked up a rattlesnake; more than likely because he had seen his dad interacting with snakes and figured it was OK. I have had a few young visitors that have had no fear of snakes; I have nothing large but sometimes people are more at ease with a large snake than a smaller one.

Originally Posted by Mokele

Dogs are also domesticated - we spent the past 15,000 years selecting for animals which would interact with us with minimal problems.

The python, on the other hand, is a wild animal (at most 3-4 generations removed from the wild), and used to eating anything it can stuff down its sizable throat.

The difference in number of incidents is hardly indicative - there are FAR more dogs than large pythons in the US, and we spend FAR more time interacting with them (properly kept pythons spend 99% of their time in their cage). The real metric for relative danger is attacks per animal per interaction-hour.

Now, find me *any* large snake keeper who hasn't gotten bitten at least once. Maybe you'll find a handful, but most of us have been bitten, even if just a quick nip from a moderate-sized animal. Find the percentage of dog owners who've been bitten. It'll be much lower, in spite of much more time with the animals.

Comparing raw numbers is just a terrible method of parsing out differences, in the end.

okay...now under your logic. Find the bites to death rates and see which animal has a higher potential for fatal delivery upon PROVEN stats. I am betting that dogs kill multiples in ratio to ANY reptile, captive or wild worldwide.

remember...you are singling out LARGE reptiles....I am using them as a whole just like dogs. And when you use a basis....the average person may have 1-2 dogs. Many people have 10+ and some exceeding 100 reptiles in their collections.

Let's see:

According to this site, there are approximately 72,000,000 dogs in the US, at an average of 1.7 per household. With an average US household size of 2.59, and assuming 8 hours of contact per day (with the other 16 for work and sleep), that comes to roughly 544 billion person-interaction-hours per year. In 2007 (most recent year I can find), there were 33 fatalities. So:

Dogs: 1 fatality per 16 billion person-interaction-hours

Now, according to the same source, there are 586,000 snakes in captivity in the US. We can use the same 2.59 people per household. But this is for all snakes. Clearly true giants don't make up anywhere near that, but they're still popular, so let's estimate 10% of those are giants. For hours per day, it's probably less than one, probably less than one per week. But let's go with that, for simplicity's sake, and to give us an overestimate. It seems that a ballpark average is 1 death per year. That all comes to:

Giant snakes: Approximately 1 death per 8 million person-interaction-hours.

Based on this, giant snakes are 2000 times as hazardous as dogs. Even if my numbers or calculations are off, it'd have to be a hell of an error to close that gap.

Really, this shouldn't be surprising. Domesticated animals have been bred to be as harmless as possible, whereas giant snakes have evolved to be apex predators, and we've done little to change that.

problem with your theory is that interaction is exposure since this snake was not intentionally interacting with the child. This was not an accident of bad handling practices, this is an accident of bad keeping. Therefore the time frames are the same for interaction.

Yes the likelihood off your stats are that a snake is more prone to kill than a dog. Dogs are still more prone to pray on those outside their own household on people who have not accepted the risks with ownership.


I can bring up numerous posts and info online proving how dogs are anything but harmless but this is known and accepted.


I will remember how dangerous my constrictors are after that 20 or 30th dog attack in Baltimore city is recorded this year.

problem with your theory is that interaction is exposure since this snake was not intentionally interacting with the child. This was not an accident of bad handling practices, this is an accident of bad keeping. Therefore the time frames are the same for interaction.

Even so, that doesn't erase the massive disparity.

I can bring up numerous posts and info online proving how dogs are anything but harmless but this is known and accepted.

Nobody here claimed anything like that, only that they're *less* dangerous.

I will remember how dangerous my constrictors are after that 20 or 30th dog attack in Baltimore city is recorded this year.

That's like saying cars are safer than motorcycles because there are more car accidents.

Seems to me that the only one NOT carrying the stupidity gene didn't survive the incident....

Any bets on whether or not that state gets some knee jerk legislation to ban "Dangerous Animals"? Another classic case of stupid irresponsible people making it difficult for the rest of us.

Ralph

I live in vegas and saw the report and the snake... it was nowhere near 300 pounds... the dummy mother said that they were watching it for some friends in the biggest cage they could find wich was secured with bricks and duct tape. apparently the snake got out of its cage and the door to the room had been left open... the snake was maybe 100 pounds and about 15 ft... and on the news here at least they only said the snake was found coiled around the boy but never said anything about it biting.