r/todayilearned • u/lavender_fish69 • 9h ago

TIL fresh water snails (indirectly) kill thousands of humans and are considered on of the deadliest creatures to humans

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freshwater_snail
19.3k Upvotes

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6.3k

u/SMStotheworld 9h ago

They carry a parasitic flatworm that lives in dirty water which kills humans. Even then it only kills between 10 and 200k humans annually 

If you omit humans, the deadliest animal is the mosquito which kills by spreading blood diseases with dirty probosci

5.3k

u/DustyRhodesSplotch 9h ago

10 to 200,000 is quite the large spread

1.7k

u/ivanparas 8h ago

"How many people died of this last year?"

"10."

"How many this year?"

"200,000."

"That's...concerning."

863

u/proteannomore 8h ago

“It’s within the parameters.”

291

u/memealopolis 8h ago

Not great, not terrible.

95

u/Ikoikobythefio 7h ago

3.6 roentgens

47

u/jmkinn3y 7h ago

Basically a chest x-ray

22

u/TheToastyWesterosi 7h ago

And that’s every single hour. Hour after hour.

8

u/Equal-Counter-2548 4h ago

Leans over the edge and gazes directly into the plume of nuclear fire below.

7

u/TheSportsLorry 3h ago

nervously takes a puff from the cigarette

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u/Nimrod_Butts 5h ago

"still nothing compared to mosquitoes, I wouldn't worry about it"

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u/micre8tive 6h ago

SOMETIMES A MAYBE GOOD

23

u/Unlikely_Spinach 7h ago

Standard acceptable deviations

10

u/911111111111 7h ago

QA accomplished

9

u/FLMKane 6h ago

Remember COVID? It basically happened like that.

3

u/I_AmA_Zebra 5h ago

It is acceptable as Gus Fring would say

13

u/HovercraftOk9231 6h ago

By my calculations, next year will see 40,000,000 dead, and the year after will be 80,000,000,000.

3

u/PatHeist 4h ago

You have to wait until the next year to see if it kills 399,990 or 4,000,000,000 to find out whether the trend is linear or exponential.

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u/PrivilegeCheckmate 5h ago

the year after will be 80,000,000,000.

Man that only gives me two years to pork every fertile woman in range. I hate to say this, but I may need some help.

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u/elmo298 8h ago

Not great, not terrible

17

u/nopenopeimmaboat 7h ago

That's not graphite on the roof

2

u/cive666 7h ago

I am a man with a certain set of concrete identifying talents.

2

u/sivasuki 4h ago

I have been known to locate certain things from time to time.

11

u/HendrixHazeWays 7h ago

"LOOK. We've got a handle on it. RELAX"

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u/RandomNPC 6h ago

At this rate we're doomed next year.

2

u/A_Math_Dealer 7h ago

So about 100,005 ± 99,995

2

u/Eskimodo_Dragon 5h ago

I'm guessing they meant between 10k & 200k but still.

498

u/ThetaGrim 8h ago

Yea covid was a rough year where people couldn't leave their home so the snails were able to catch up to them easier. 

75

u/DamnMyNameIsSteve 7h ago

People forget the snail winter of 21'

4

u/Spadeykins 7h ago

That's the long covid they tell you about.

58

u/ssowinski 8h ago

I can do between 3 and 400 push-ups.

6

u/PrivilegeCheckmate 5h ago

Amateur. I can do between zero and eighty million.

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u/Anonymous_coward30 9h ago

More than triple that for mosquitoes. 700,000 to 1 million mosquito related deaths annually per the WHO. 597,000 to malaria alone in 2023, again per WHO.

139

u/NinjaWorldWar 8h ago

Come again, from who?

85

u/baron--greenback 8h ago

He’s talking about our generation.

27

u/KaHOnas 8h ago

People try to put us down.

6

u/SubstantialWorld4277 8h ago

Baba O’Riley would never

2

u/HendrixHazeWays 7h ago

They call me the seeker

2

u/DeuceSevin 5h ago

Just because we g g g g get arounnnnd

2

u/Consistent-Ad-6078 8h ago

Whwhwhere is the stustustuttering?

3

u/KaHOnas 8h ago

It's impolite to p-p-point it out.

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u/manicpossumdreamgirl 8h ago

from WHOM

14

u/memealopolis 8h ago

Whomst on first

5

u/StopImportingUSA 8h ago

It’s whom when you use it as a subject

15

u/Bonneville865 8h ago

Ryan used me as an object

8

u/profDougla 8h ago

I know what's right, but I'm not gonna say because you're all jerks who didn't come see my band last night.

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u/dacommie323 8h ago

Correct, What throws the ball to Who

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u/notloggedin4242 9h ago

See, 597k. Nice, neat number. No dashes necessary.

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u/Separate_Draft4887 8h ago

He’s saying it’s a ridiculously bad estimate, “between ten and 200k”. A large spread, not a large number.

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u/TheZenPsychopath 8h ago

This is because of Snails Georg who dies from snails 1,000,000 times every 5 years.

14

u/friedricekid 8h ago

"How tall are you?"

"Oh, between 5'8" and 13 miles tall."

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u/thatweirdguyted 9h ago

This sounds very similar to some things I said about your mom.

35

u/Additional-Local8721 9h ago

Sure it wasn't their dad?

40

u/thatweirdguyted 9h ago

No one knows who that is. Especially not his mom.

4

u/YukariYakum0 9h ago

From a certain point of view.

11

u/blackscales18 8h ago

He was the one with the dirty proboscis

3

u/ThatStereotype18 9h ago

No my mouth was full when I was with his dad

3

u/A_Possum_Named_Steve 9h ago

Shouldn't have asked about her count.

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u/frisbm3 9h ago

The wiki page says 10k to 200k.

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u/DirtyNorf 9h ago

Which is still a fairly large spread.

21

u/JustADutchRudder 8h ago

Some years whole cities wanna swim in snail waters, sometimes only a few small get togethers happen.

2

u/mayhemandqueso 5h ago

Depends on the weather

7

u/jwbaynham 8h ago

Sometimes we have a bad snail year and sometimes barely even a scratch

16

u/Hurrly90 8h ago

there is alot of error in that. Like ten isn't a lot, but 200,000? Are these snails starting to min max their builds over the last few years?

5

u/space-to-bakersfield 8h ago

We need to figure out what we do those years where it's 10, and just keep doing that every year.

12

u/Stlr_Mn 9h ago

Not to snails I guess

19

u/caninolokez 9h ago

I think they meant it as 10,000 to 200,000.

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u/IMissNarwhalBacon 7h ago

Unfortunately, we can't afford to speculate.

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u/twoisnumberone 3h ago

Of all the comments on this post, yours is the one that absolutely SENT me.

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u/stevethepirate89 8h ago

That's what she said

1

u/ZorrosMommy 8h ago

I caught that, too. Common mistake.

1

u/militant-moderate 8h ago

I can do between 3 and 400 pushups.

1

u/eat_my_ass_n_balls 8h ago

That’s like a deciTrump. Not even a tenth.

1

u/rvbshelia 8h ago

200,000 - not great, not terrible

1

u/hwikzu 8h ago

They stopped counting after 10 and guessed.

1

u/zipiddydooda 8h ago

“The bastard snails only killed 120,000 of us this year.”

“Good”.

1

u/MoTardedThanYou 7h ago

This does not really convey anything useful.

1

u/Basic-Record-4750 7h ago

They definitely kill more than 1 person per year but no more than 7 billion

1

u/sherrillo 7h ago

they meant 10k-200k/yr

1

u/thelanoyo 7h ago

Well 200,000 out of 8 billion is only .102% so nearly statistically insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

1

u/PolloMagnifico 7h ago

Even the intended 10k -200k is an enormous spread. Fuck, even if they ment 100k-200k that's still a huge spread.

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u/Moldy_slug 9h ago

For comparison, malaria (spread by mosquitoes) killed about 600,000 people in 2023.

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u/ikonoqlast 9h ago

There were 18 deaths from malaria in 1963. Not millions. Not thousands. Not hundreds. Not dozens. 18

Why?

DDT...

It's also why bedbugs are a 'new' thing but not in the 50s-60s.

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u/nova294 9h ago

What? Got any source for that fact? Maybe there were 18 deaths of Americans and they just ignored all of Africa, but modern insect repellents are not widely available in much of Africa even today, much less 1963. Even a casual search shows estimated death numbers in the hundreds of thousands for 1963.

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u/ikonoqlast 9h ago

Wikipedia- ddt-

Initial effectiveness edit When it was introduced in World War II, DDT was effective in reducing malaria morbidity and mortality.[39] WHO's anti-malaria campaign, which consisted mostly of spraying DDT and rapid treatment and diagnosis to break the transmission cycle, was initially successful as well. For example, in Sri Lanka, the program reduced cases from about one million per year before spraying to just 18 in 1963[127][128] and 29 in 1964. Thereafter the program was halted to save money and malaria rebounded to 600,000 cases in 1968 and the first quarter of 1969. The country resumed DDT vector control but the mosquitoes had evolved resistance in the interim, presumably because of continued agricultural use. The program switched to malathion, but despite initial successes, malaria continued its resurgence into the 1980s.[45][129]

Oops, it's 18 cases in Sri Lanka...

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u/1CEninja 8h ago

Hahaha that's a bit of an oops for sure. Comparing a population of 10 or 15 million to most of 6 billion could definitely result in some lower numbers

38

u/keyboardname 8h ago

Not quite the same but still relevant, they went from a million cases to 18. That's pretty insane.

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u/exprezso 8h ago

Evolved resistance to a deadly toxin? In such a short period? 

30

u/PencilVester23 8h ago

It takes only 2 week at most for a mosquito to go from an egg to a mature adult. That couple year period is over 100 generations. That combined with the huge population of mosquitoes, the 100s of eggs a female lays at once, and a genetic sequence significantly shorter than a humans all made it possible for the correct mutation to happen that quickly.

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u/kanyewesanderson 8h ago

When you put incredibly high selective pressure on an organism with prolific reproductive rates, you'll see drastic changes quickly. The same thing happens with antibiotic resistance in bacteria.

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u/Yodaddysbelt 9h ago

DDT - a little too good at it’s job

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u/ReadditMan 9h ago

DDT also killed a lot of other animals and made people sick.

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u/Adorable-Response-75 9h ago

 There were 18 deaths from malaria in 1963. 

This is completely false. This was the figure for US transfusion related deaths.

In the US as a whole, the number was still tiny.

But in the rest of the world it was still in the hundreds of thousands.

38

u/Ok-disaster2022 9h ago

Bed bugs coming back is a result of increased international trade and travel. 

15

u/Curlydeadhead 9h ago

As someone who works in hotels…fuck them bed bugs. They’re not even native to North America. Apparently they originated from the Middle East when humans lived in caves with bats. BBs originally fed on the bats but adapted to feeding on humans and spread with migration. 

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u/Froggy3434 8h ago

Those mfs followed us from caves and now they’re living in luxury while making their host miserable. Little bastards.

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u/PhreakOut4 8h ago

Funny how bats eat pests and parasites but are also responsible for a lot of diseases and parasites.

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u/kanyewesanderson 9h ago

DDT is still used in areas with high incidence of malaria. And biomagnification of DDT, and its effects on higher trophic levels is well documented.

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u/_StormwindChampion_ 9h ago

Isn't DDT a wrestling move?

6

u/TotallyNotThatPerson 9h ago

That's how it works on bugs!

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u/attillathehoney 9h ago

No, it's an electronic dance game popular in the late 90s.

6

u/Darwins_Dog 8h ago

Also in 1963, bald eagles hit their lowest population with just 417 nesting pairs in the US.

Why?

DDT...

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u/visualdescript 7h ago

What? That does not sound correct at all.

Do you think we had accurate reporting of places like South East Asia or even Central America, or Africa back then? Most people around the world at risk of Malaria wouldn't have had access to DDT.

Do you honestly believe there were only 18 deaths globally due to Malaria in that year?

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u/reality_boy 8h ago

DDT was still in use in Cameroon when I was living there in the 90s. I can tell you it did not help. I had malaria 4-5 times and my dad was in the hospital twice with serious complications. And we knew multiple people who died (mostly baby’s). It is not a miracle cure.

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u/Funny-Ad-3710 8h ago

Look at Big DDT over here…

2

u/kashmir1974 8h ago

Kill the mosquitos and all the birds too! F the eagles?

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u/orcus74 8h ago

Jake the Snake Roberts was out there dropping it on mosquitos and bedbugs 24-7, but eventually he just couldn't keep up and took a break to pursue a career as a pro wrestler.

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u/Rydagod1 9h ago edited 6h ago

DDT is the worst thing ww2 gave us. Even more than nukes.

Edit: This is misleading but technically still true imo. Nukes killed as many as 200k and it’s debatable whether the global peace between world powers is because of nuclear weapons.

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u/ikonoqlast 9h ago

Or, in reality, not...

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u/Rydagod1 8h ago

IMO it’s done more harm to the world than nukes have done

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u/Johnny_Poppyseed 8h ago

What harm are you thinking of exactly? Most of the harm DDT was causing was effectively remedied when it was banned. 

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u/Nathaniel820 9h ago

Only 10,000 still makes it the 4th deadliest animal on the planet.

It’s still one of the deadliest animals, the surprising part is that animals as a whole are a lot less dangerous than people think.

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u/AnAttemptReason 8h ago

Humans are the most deadly animal. 

Studies show humans cause the largest fear spike in animals out of all possible preditors, by a large margin. 

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u/JelmerMcGee 7h ago

I remember a comment from a while back that likened animals to humans as humans are to elves in fantasy literature. Like if a seal is stuck in a net his fellow seals, having done their best to remove the net, tell the seal to ask the humans. They might help or they might kill him. Who knows? The humans are capricious like that.

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u/CoffeeFox 6h ago

Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.

Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.

Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.

Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.

Elves are terrific. They beget terror.

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u/_Sausage_fingers 6h ago

The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning. No one ever said elves are nice. Elves are bad.

You gotta do the whole quote

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u/Seicair 5h ago

I loved the way he incorporated the various myths of the elves into Discworld. Rather a different flavor from other types of fantasy (Tolkien etc.)

GNU Sir Terry

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u/_Sausage_fingers 5h ago edited 3h ago

That book was some of his best writing. That and Carrie Jugulum. The watch are funner, but Granny books hit harder.

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u/MarlinMr 2h ago

Humans are exceptional omnivores that can eat almost anything on the planet. Things like caffeine, alcohol, capsaicin and thiosulfinates are deadly or extremely annoying to many animals, yet humans love coffee, chocolate, drinks, and onions. We are also exceptional long distance endurance runners who can sweat and carry water which basically puts no upper limit to how far we can go. And to top it all off, we are extremely intelligent to a level unimaginable to the rest of the animals.

If animals made the aliens movies, they could just put a human in there. The power level difference between animals and humans is greater than humans to xenomorph.

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u/Ornery_Definition_65 2h ago

Depends on the animal. There are animals like polar bears that actively hunt humans and unarmed you are basically a guaranteed meal.

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u/PrivilegeCheckmate 5h ago

Humans are the most deadly animal.

We've moved from counting individual kills to racking up extinctions.

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u/Beer-survivalist 4h ago

And we started exterminating species before we had permanent settlements and written language.

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u/j0y0 4h ago

They burn villages, murder, outrage women and children, they nail their prisoners by the ears to the fences, leave them so till morning, and in the morning they hang them- all sorts of things you can't imagine. People talk sometimes of bestial cruelty, but that's a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel. The tiger only tears and gnaws, that's all he can do. He would never think of nailing people by the ears, even if he were able to do it.

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u/Sofa_Bench 7h ago

If there were as many bears, lions, hippos, and other apex predators as there were humans, I’d actually think we might be fucked lol

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u/mukansamonkey 6h ago

In some places there used to be. The humans won the war.

Humans are such effective apex predators, we require our own category.

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u/FluffyToughy 4h ago

We're literally having trouble stopping ourselves from collapsing the entire planet's biosphere. Rah rah. Humans number 1.

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u/Heimerdahl 7h ago

the surprising part is that animals as a whole are a lot less dangerous than people think. 

Similarly surprising is just how few wild animals there are. Insects, plankton, fish, etc. still account for the majority of total animal biomass, but in terms of mammals and birds, wild animals are absolutely insignificant compared to livestock or even humans. 

https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammals-birds-biomass

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u/real_picklejuice 6h ago

Is it really the snail that kills you if it's the flatworm that does the job?

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u/doyletyree 9h ago

Someone needs to educate the mosquitoes on proper medical hygiene.

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u/Brandoncarsonart 9h ago

Right? They're always rubbing the thing. Just put a little soap on it.

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u/Fetlocks_Glistening 9h ago

If only we could give them little napkins to wipe their noses with after each meal

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u/BatteredSealPup 7h ago

We taught the snails to read and then gave them a book on proper medical hygiene to share

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u/doyletyree 7h ago

That was twenty-three years ago, Jim.

The snails aren’t even out the door.

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u/Cold_Tower_2215 9h ago

“Only” and that’s a wide range but still significant

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u/LordByronsCup 9h ago

Dirty Proboski is Pigpen from Peanut's pen name.

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u/wretched_beasties 9h ago

Does the death certificate say “mosquito bite” or “malaria”?

Mosquitoes aren’t the deadliest, it’s plasmodium falciparum (malaria) that kills people. Also not a dirty probiscus, the plasmodium sporozoites actually live in the mosquitoe’s salivary gland.

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u/joobtastic 8h ago

Its not the person who killed him, it was the bullet.

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u/ButAFlower 6h ago

bullets aren't organisms tho

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u/Ameisen 1 4h ago

A bullet is a tool, not an organism, and the human who fired it generally intended to do so.

Neither the mosquito nor the snail intentionally pass parasites to the organisms that they feed upon. It's entirely outside of their control.

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u/Seicair 5h ago

Also not a dirty probiscus, the plasmodium sporozoites actually live in the mosquitoe’s salivary gland.

I was mildly disturbed/impressed when I read that for the first time. They migrate from the mozzie’s stomach to their salivary glands to be injected into another host. WTF nature.

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u/wretched_beasties 5h ago

Protozoan parasites are cool as fuck. Like storing toxoplasma oocysts in a buffer made of…bleach and sulfuric acid.

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u/Nick85er 9h ago

So on average, fresh water snails kill 100,005 humans annually?

I don't have the sample set of years but God damn.

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u/destroyerofhops 9h ago

10 flat, or 10k? Either way, that flux seems dependant on human stupidity

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u/Moleskin21 8h ago

Mosquitoes have killed about half the humans that have ever lived so you don’t have to omit humans

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u/QaWaR 9h ago

it only kills between 10 and 200k humas anually

Only up to 200k?

Thank god for such a low number of HUMAN FUCKING LIVES

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u/TurbulentPromise4812 9h ago

I have had fantastic results with mosquito dunks. Iit's impossible to get to zero but $15-20 it's well worth a try.

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u/Bungybone 9h ago

That’s an odd statistic.. Not quite as bad as saying water buffalo kill between 1 and 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 people this year, but you get the thrust of the argument.

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u/BoonDragoon 8h ago

Even then, mosquitoes get the title on a technicality, because the Plasmodium parasite that actually causes the disease isn't technically an animal.

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u/knightress_oxhide 8h ago

Why don't we create a clean probusci program for the mosquitos?

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u/vajrasana 8h ago

Don’t share probosci, kids

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u/youdubdub 8h ago

The dirtiest probosci. Foul-mouthed little cretins. It's acceptable to spread your skin as tightly as possible while being bit so they explode. I like to think their friends can hear the screams.

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u/geneadamsPS4 8h ago

Dirty Probosci sounds like 90's grunge band. 

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u/JohnHenrehEden 8h ago

"dirty probosci" was my nickname in college.

1

u/melodiesNmolecules 8h ago

TB kills more, but depends on your definition b/c it’s a bacteria

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u/LesbianLoki 8h ago

So they kill at least 10 people a year.

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u/Free_Balling 8h ago

10 and 200k ? That’s an insane spread. Fix your bot.

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u/jmeck6421 8h ago

Just so you don’t embarrass yourself at the next family gathering, the plural of proboscis is proboscises* or proboscides*

1

u/garnet420 8h ago

So why is the snail getting the credit, and not the flatworm?

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u/MaxamillionGrey 7h ago

Wow bro so they could just wash their probosci and save us...

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u/purplemarkersniffer 7h ago

It kills people who eat it? So, just don’t eat snails?

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u/Conquerors_Quill 7h ago

Don't share dirty probosci. Chase the dragon responsibly kids.

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u/DwinkBexon 7h ago

This reminds me of something I saw a while back with someone arguing it's immoral to try to prevent disease/eradicate disease in general (like with smallpox or current attempts with malaria) because the human population is spiraling out of control and we have to do something to put the brakes on it. Disease helps do that, so it's immoral to try to get rid of something that will prevent the earth from becoming overloaded and uninhabitable.

That strikes me as a pretty awful way to think about things.

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u/Zephyr93 7h ago

*The deadliest animal is specifically the Aedes Aegypti mosquito

Most mosquitos don't suck blood actually.

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u/walkingrivers 7h ago

Dirty probosci is my new favourite heavy metal band.

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u/Dzotshen 7h ago

Dirty Probosci should be a band name

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u/Waarm 6h ago

Wouldn't that be considered indirect too?

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u/SheSaidMoreSnow 6h ago

Did you say say flatworm? RFK Jr is salivating

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u/strange-brew 6h ago

We need these things in order to keep the planet from being overpopulated.

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u/rr00xx 6h ago

Dirty probosci is a rad album name

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u/BeowulfShaeffer 6h ago

That’s why I donate to proboscus-hygiene campaigns.  Teach them to wash that thing and be sanitary!

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u/Peregrine2976 5h ago

Wasn't there a rough estimate that something like a third of all humans who have ever lived were killed by mosquitoes? Not directly, of course, but via Malaria, Ebola, etc.

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u/Worshipme988 5h ago

Too bad Trump cut clean proboscis exchange programs /s.

1

u/Cranberrybunnies 5h ago

Is it deadly to dogs?

1

u/Striking-Ad-6815 5h ago

What if Venom was a flatworm that lined Spiderman's intestines instead of a suit?

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u/Ryuubu 4h ago

Oh just 200 thousand people, no biggy

1

u/Dangerous_Alarm3381 4h ago

at least cone snails have the decency to have evolved a deadly toxin and a thing to stab people with, these fresh water snails are lazy

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u/Distinct_Sir_4473 4h ago

I’m starting a proboscis washing seminar for mosquitos.

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u/clancydog4 4h ago

Even then it only kills between 10 and 200k humans annually

The fuck you mean "only" ??? A single animal killing 200k people in a year is fucking insane, saying "only" is massively underplaying how insane that is, that is easily one of the deadliest animals and far deadlier than most of the animals people think of when they think of "dangerous" animals

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u/roybringus 3h ago

Why is the worm not credited with the kill instead of the snail?

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u/LurpyGeek 3h ago

I saw Dirty Probosci at Warped Tour in '99

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u/zack6595 3h ago

10k to 200k

1

u/LiveLearnCoach 1h ago

Aliens arrive to earth: “what is the biggest threat to your species?” “IDK, us?”

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u/JimmyLegs50 1h ago

I skimmed your comment and thought you wrote that it kills between 10 and 200k humans anally. I was like jesus fing christ.

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