An alligator bit an 84-year-old woman who was walking her dog in South Florida on Thursday, causing her “significant injuries,” authorities said.
The incident occurred in North Fort Myers near a pond when the gator, measuring 7 feet and 3 inches, bit the woman on her right leg, according to a statement from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
The woman also sustained injuries to her arms and wrist and was hospitalized, according to commission spokesperson Bradley Johnson. Her condition was unknown on Friday, Johnson said, but he called her injuries “significant.”
The woman was walking the dog, which was uninjured, near her neighborhood, Johnson said.
After the bite from the large reptile, a nuisance alligator trapper found the animal. The alligator was “humanely euthanized” because fish and wildlife considers public safety its first priority, Johnson said.
Alligator bites on people are rare in Florida, the commission said. According to its latest figures ending in December 2022, there haven’t been more than a dozen bites per year since 2017. In that stretch, the most bites occurred in 2017 and 2020, when there were 12 each year. One person died in both 2018 and 2019 after being bitten, the commission said.
The commission advises people in the Sunshine State to keep a safe distance from alligators; keep pets on a leash and away from edges of water, noting that pets are often alligators’ “natural prey.”
The commission also recommends only swimming in designated areas during daylight hours because gators are most active between dusk and dawn, and it warns to never feed an alligator.
Although gator attacks on people are rare in Florida, they are not unheard of.
In 2023, a 10-foot alligator bit off a Florida man’s right arm after he fell into a pond in Port Charlotte.
The previous year, a man survived an alligator attack on the Gulf Coast of Florida after he mistook the 7-foot-long reptile for a dog.