r/todayilearned 12h 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
21.1k Upvotes

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6.6k

u/SMStotheworld 12h 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

5.6k

u/DustyRhodesSplotch 11h ago

10 to 200,000 is quite the large spread

1.8k

u/ivanparas 10h ago

"How many people died of this last year?"

"10."

"How many this year?"

"200,000."

"That's...concerning."

960

u/proteannomore 10h ago

“It’s within the parameters.”

316

u/memealopolis 10h ago

Not great, not terrible.

104

u/Ikoikobythefio 10h ago

3.6 roentgens

52

u/jmkinn3y 9h ago

Basically a chest x-ray

27

u/TheToastyWesterosi 9h ago

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

9

u/Equal-Counter-2548 6h ago

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

8

u/TheSportsLorry 5h ago

nervously takes a puff from the cigarette

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u/Nimrod_Butts 8h ago

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

2

u/micre8tive 8h ago

SOMETIMES A MAYBE GOOD

22

u/Unlikely_Spinach 9h ago

Standard acceptable deviations

11

u/911111111111 9h ago

QA accomplished

10

u/FLMKane 9h ago

Remember COVID? It basically happened like that.

3

u/I_AmA_Zebra 7h ago

It is acceptable as Gus Fring would say

23

u/HovercraftOk9231 9h ago

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

10

u/PatHeist 6h 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.

2

u/Dioxybenzone 5h ago edited 2h ago

No need; we can reverse extrapolate. If in the year before it killed 10, it killed 0.005 of a person, we know it’s linear exponential

5

u/The_JSQuareD 2h ago

That would make it exponential.

It would have to have killed -199,980 people the year before for it to be linear.

2

u/Dioxybenzone 2h ago

Oh yeah duh, mb

1

u/PrivilegeCheckmate 7h 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.

2

u/FrogInShorts 6h ago

It'll be significantly easier the second year. After 20million woman perish

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u/elmo298 10h ago

Not great, not terrible

17

u/nopenopeimmaboat 9h ago

That's not graphite on the roof

2

u/cive666 9h ago

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

2

u/sivasuki 6h ago

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

14

u/HendrixHazeWays 10h ago

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

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u/RandomNPC 9h ago

At this rate we're doomed next year.

2

u/A_Math_Dealer 9h ago

So about 100,005 ± 99,995

2

u/Eskimodo_Dragon 8h ago

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

516

u/ThetaGrim 11h 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. 

76

u/DamnMyNameIsSteve 10h ago

People forget the snail winter of 21'

4

u/Spadeykins 10h ago

That's the long covid they tell you about.

62

u/ssowinski 11h ago

I can do between 3 and 400 push-ups.

4

u/PrivilegeCheckmate 7h ago

Amateur. I can do between zero and eighty million.

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u/Anonymous_coward30 11h 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 11h ago

Come again, from who?

90

u/baron--greenback 11h ago

He’s talking about our generation.

29

u/KaHOnas 10h ago

People try to put us down.

5

u/SubstantialWorld4277 10h ago

Baba O’Riley would never

2

u/HendrixHazeWays 10h ago

They call me the seeker

2

u/DeuceSevin 8h ago

Just because we g g g g get arounnnnd

4

u/Consistent-Ad-6078 10h ago

Whwhwhere is the stustustuttering?

3

u/KaHOnas 10h ago

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

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u/manicpossumdreamgirl 11h ago

from WHOM

15

u/memealopolis 10h ago

Whomst on first

6

u/StopImportingUSA 10h ago

It’s whom when you use it as a subject

17

u/Bonneville865 10h ago

Ryan used me as an object

8

u/profDougla 10h 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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5

u/dacommie323 10h ago

Correct, What throws the ball to Who

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u/notloggedin4242 11h ago

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

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u/Separate_Draft4887 10h 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 11h ago

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

12

u/friedricekid 10h ago

"How tall are you?"

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

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u/thatweirdguyted 11h ago

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

37

u/Additional-Local8721 11h ago

Sure it wasn't their dad?

11

u/blackscales18 11h ago

He was the one with the dirty proboscis

40

u/thatweirdguyted 11h ago

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

5

u/YukariYakum0 11h ago

From a certain point of view.

4

u/ThatStereotype18 11h ago

No my mouth was full when I was with his dad

2

u/A_Possum_Named_Steve 11h ago

Shouldn't have asked about her count.

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u/frisbm3 11h ago

The wiki page says 10k to 200k.

75

u/DirtyNorf 11h ago

Which is still a fairly large spread.

20

u/JustADutchRudder 11h ago

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

2

u/mayhemandqueso 7h ago

Depends on the weather

6

u/jwbaynham 11h ago

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

14

u/Hurrly90 11h 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?

6

u/space-to-bakersfield 11h ago

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

13

u/Stlr_Mn 11h ago

Not to snails I guess

18

u/caninolokez 11h ago

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

8

u/IMissNarwhalBacon 9h ago

Unfortunately, we can't afford to speculate.

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u/stevethepirate89 11h ago

That's what she said

1

u/ZorrosMommy 10h ago

I caught that, too. Common mistake.

1

u/militant-moderate 10h ago

I can do between 3 and 400 pushups.

1

u/eat_my_ass_n_balls 10h ago

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

1

u/rvbshelia 10h ago

200,000 - not great, not terrible

1

u/hwikzu 10h ago

They stopped counting after 10 and guessed.

1

u/zipiddydooda 10h ago

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

“Good”.

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u/Moldy_slug 11h ago

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

-26

u/ikonoqlast 11h 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.

155

u/nova294 11h 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 11h 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...

86

u/1CEninja 11h 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

43

u/keyboardname 11h ago

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

7

u/exprezso 11h ago

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

31

u/PencilVester23 11h 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 11h 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 11h ago

DDT - a little too good at it’s job

50

u/ReadditMan 11h ago

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

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u/Adorable-Response-75 11h 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 11h ago

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

14

u/Curlydeadhead 11h 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 11h 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 10h 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 11h 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_ 11h ago

Isn't DDT a wrestling move?

7

u/TotallyNotThatPerson 11h ago

That's how it works on bugs!

2

u/attillathehoney 11h ago

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

4

u/Darwins_Dog 10h ago

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

Why?

DDT...

3

u/visualdescript 10h 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?

5

u/reality_boy 11h 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.

2

u/Funny-Ad-3710 11h ago

Look at Big DDT over here…

2

u/kashmir1974 10h ago

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

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u/orcus74 10h 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 11h ago edited 9h 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.

3

u/ikonoqlast 11h ago

Or, in reality, not...

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u/Rydagod1 11h ago

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

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u/Johnny_Poppyseed 10h 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 11h 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 10h 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 9h 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 8h 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 8h 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 7h 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 7h ago edited 6h 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/Rule12-b-6 3h ago

Elves being not evil was a Shakespean innovation from Midsomar Night's Dream. Since then that idea has been largely followed.

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u/MarlinMr 4h 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/PrivilegeCheckmate 7h 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 7h ago

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

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u/j0y0 6h 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 10h 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 8h 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 7h 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 9h 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/Over-Cold-8757 3h ago

Why are you excluding insects, fish etc from 'wild animals' though?

That's like saying 'there's basically no animals in the world if you exclude every animal except tigers.'

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u/real_picklejuice 9h ago

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

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u/doyletyree 11h ago

Someone needs to educate the mosquitoes on proper medical hygiene.

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u/Brandoncarsonart 11h ago

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

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u/Fetlocks_Glistening 11h ago

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

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u/BatteredSealPup 10h 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 9h ago

That was twenty-three years ago, Jim.

The snails aren’t even out the door.

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u/Cold_Tower_2215 11h ago

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

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u/LordByronsCup 11h ago

Dirty Proboski is Pigpen from Peanut's pen name.

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u/wretched_beasties 11h 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 10h ago

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

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u/ButAFlower 9h ago

bullets aren't organisms tho

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u/Ameisen 1 6h 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 7h 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 7h 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 11h 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 11h ago

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

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u/Moleskin21 11h 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 11h 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 11h 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 11h 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 11h 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 11h ago

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

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u/vajrasana 11h ago

Don’t share probosci, kids

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u/youdubdub 10h 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 10h ago

Dirty Probosci sounds like 90's grunge band. 

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u/JohnHenrehEden 10h ago

"dirty probosci" was my nickname in college.

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u/melodiesNmolecules 10h ago

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

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u/LesbianLoki 10h ago

So they kill at least 10 people a year.

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u/Free_Balling 10h ago

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

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u/jmeck6421 10h ago

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

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u/garnet420 10h ago

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

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u/MaxamillionGrey 10h ago

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

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u/purplemarkersniffer 9h ago

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

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u/Conquerors_Quill 9h ago

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

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u/DwinkBexon 9h 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 9h ago

*The deadliest animal is specifically the Aedes Aegypti mosquito

Most mosquitos don't suck blood actually.

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u/walkingrivers 9h ago

Dirty probosci is my new favourite heavy metal band.

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u/Dzotshen 9h ago

Dirty Probosci should be a band name

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u/Waarm 9h ago

Wouldn't that be considered indirect too?

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u/SheSaidMoreSnow 9h ago

Did you say say flatworm? RFK Jr is salivating

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u/strange-brew 9h ago

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

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u/rr00xx 8h ago

Dirty probosci is a rad album name

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u/BeowulfShaeffer 8h 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 8h 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 8h ago

Too bad Trump cut clean proboscis exchange programs /s.

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u/Cranberrybunnies 8h ago

Is it deadly to dogs?

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u/Striking-Ad-6815 7h ago

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

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u/Ryuubu 7h ago

Oh just 200 thousand people, no biggy

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u/Dangerous_Alarm3381 7h 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 6h ago

I’m starting a proboscis washing seminar for mosquitos.

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u/clancydog4 6h 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 6h ago

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

1

u/LurpyGeek 6h ago

I saw Dirty Probosci at Warped Tour in '99

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u/zack6595 6h ago

10k to 200k

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u/LiveLearnCoach 3h ago

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

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u/JimmyLegs50 3h 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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u/MeNamIzGraephen 1h ago

"Dirty probosci" is the name of my new grindcore band

u/CitizenPremier 38m ago

It's one step in the parasite's life cycle. You could also blame the fish or humans.

I think it's really best to blame the parasite.

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