Number of deaths due to constrictor snakes?

[kitedemon]

rayteurfs welcome. A dead thread resurrected, is well, alive again. I completely see what you are saying. The error of stats, more dogs mean more deaths. It should be a % or something to have true value, 0.1% (made up number) of dogs kill their owners or something along these lines.

We always talk about responsible ownership, sadly it is the people whom should likely not own a snake at all, (or have kids) that make the stats (same for dogs for that matter) It is difficult to enforce good ownership on the part of a government. I live where for a long time (15+ years) large snakes have been illegal. I actually believe that a big snakes are not for everyone, that it requires a lot of knowledge and commitment to own one responsibility. I in part agree with what you are saying, they are not something you should be able to impulse buy.

I believe that yes there are far far more dogs than big snakes. But I believe there are more injuries, not death, needing medical attention from dogs than snakes, even looking at % of total population. A dog bit often needs medical attention a snake bit often does not.

The law makers are reacting to public phobias, fear mongering, and sensational news articles rather than hard fact. The truth is simple the people whom keep them are dangerous the animal is just an animal. A good keeper, diligent, and careful understands the animal and takes steps to keep themselves and public safe from it. It is unimportant what that animal is. The dog people say it best,

Punish the Deed, Not the Breed. This is true of big snakes, punish individual action and keepers not generic keepers across the board.

[Citrus]

The fact of the matter is that nearly everyone who isn't in the reptile hobby view snakes as evil, scary, dangerous, and life threatening creatures. Doesn't matter if it's a nine inch ring neck snake or a 15+ foot snake, they are all assumed to be dangerous. My biggest pet peeve is uneducated people who are frightened by reptiles. I was at a zoo and saw a yellow ratsnake in an enclosure, this lady comes by and assumes "rat" was short for rattle snake and left the room. The other day I was holding a four foot long red tail boa and several people saw and literally ran away.
And about the recent additions to the Lacey act, it's pointless. South florida is the only state that those snakes could live in. Down here the only worry that is sensible is that these snakes will take resources from native species. The growth of civilization is more of a threat to the native species than the invasives. Going back to what hypancistrus said, the people who are uneducated/ don't care about the wildlife and nature are only concerned about safety because of what I mentioned earlier. Whenever I mention that I have snakes, both when I was a kid with garter snakes, and now with ball pythons, people always ask how I keep such a big snake. I always point out that it's actually fairly small but it doesn't seem to matter.


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[Paragonimus westerma]

I made some vague attempt to calculate how likely someone is to get killed by a pet dog vs getting killed by a pet snake a few months ago.

...unfortunately I'm bad at math and I lost most of my work anyway, but I'm going to try to recalculate.

Between 1990 and 2012:

10 large constrictor fatalities in the USA
http://www.rexano.org/Statistics/Con...e_Fatality.pdf

340 dog fatalities in the USA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatal_d..._United_States
[I know not the best source ever]

Estimated 69,926,000 pet dogs in USA in 2012
Estimated 1,150,000 pet snakes in USA in 2012
https://www.avma.org/KB/Resources/St...ownership.aspx

0.0000049 fatalities per dog.
0.0000087 fatalities per snake.


Granted, I didn't take into account how the population of pet dogs and pet snakes changed over the 23 year period.


Based on my horrible, flawed math, you are still somewhat more likely to get killed by a pet constrictor than by a pet dog. That being said, it should also be pointed out that, AFAIK, all​ of the snake-related fatalities have directly involved their owners and not some unrelated member of the public.


EDIT: I don't know what I did differently, since the first time I did this calculation the conclusion was actually the reverse; dogs were more likely to kill you than snakes. I think I used different population numbers.

EDIT2: Additionally, these stats don't make any distinction between the numbers of small vs large dogs, or large constrictors vs any other type of snake.

[kitedemon]

Paragonimus westerma I think the estimation of snakes is far too low. That would mean Brian Barczyk owns loosely 5% of all the snakes in the USA. I would guess at least double that number or greater.