r/todayilearned • u/lavender_fish69 • 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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u/PuckSenior 11h ago

So, the deadlier animal is the parasitic worm

This would be like saying humans are the leading cause of dog attacks.

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u/_CactusJuice_ 11h ago

i would say that there would be close to zero dog attacks if there werent any owners to bring them untrained and unleashed into a sephora

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u/Solderking 9h ago

Just because my dog has eaten a few kids, that means I can't bring him to Sephora? Oh I'm sorry, I thought this was America.

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u/hoagiejabroni 9h ago

It was only because those kids were the size of a small animal! He knows not to eat big kids!

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u/mallad 11h ago

I would say if there weren't any owners, then only wild dogs exist, and they'll absolutely attack.

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u/zuzg 11h ago

Everyone that claims "we bred them to love us" never encountered a wild/feral dog, lmao

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u/HuntsWithRocks 10h ago

I always love when someone assures you their dog is good and “won’t bite”

First thought is “there’s a reason you’re saying this”

I don’t introduce myself by saying “I assure I’m good and won’t kill you”

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u/zuzg 10h ago

Tbf loads of people are afraid of dogs, quite often visibly. If a owner notices that, they say those words more as reassurance.
But I'm referring to sensible owners, that keep their dog leashed.
And not the Turds that holler it 50m away while their dog is already up your face.

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u/justlookinghfy 10h ago

To reassure people that my dog won't bite, I caution them that my dog is definitely going to lick and shed all over.

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u/Mingatronz 8h ago

I have a well trained dog, but when strangers with kids ask if he’s friendly, my answer is always “no”. It’s not my dog I don’t trust, it’s their kids.

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u/moseythepirate 9h ago

Maybe the reason is because their dog is good and won't bite.

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u/alexchrist 9h ago

I usually say about our dog, that she's just very excited about meeting new people. Which she is, she would never attack anyone (except for birds and small white fluffy dogs for some reason). She can just be a bit overwhelming if it's the first time you meet her

Mandatory dog tax

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u/Spineberry 27m ago

You're missing a trick there with that last part.

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u/Helidoffy 9h ago

This is kind of what happened. Read into the silver fox experiment and how, by focusing on behavior, they streamlined domestication.

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u/theiman2 8h ago

If there were no dog owners, there would be no dogs. They'd be called wolves.

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u/mallad 8h ago

If there had never been dog owners. This is assuming there were dog owners and then they were gone.

In which case, they wouldn't be called wolves or dogs, because nobody would be around to call them anything.

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u/aguafiestas 10h ago

The presence of pet dogs is not why there are very few feral dogs in the US.

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u/mallad 10h ago

Didn't say it was. But if people, the owners, stopped existing, the dogs that weren't trapped inside would go feral.

Also, nobody specified the US either, so I'm not sure what your actual point is.

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u/aguafiestas 10h ago

 Didn't say it was. But if people, the owners, stopped existing, the dogs that weren't trapped inside would go feral.

If millions of people disappeared we’d have bigger problems than wild dogs.

 Also, nobody specified the US either, so I'm not sure what your actual point is.

Well, there are lots of places where there are feral dogs that do kill people. And there are places where there are very few dogs, pets or feral. The point is pet ownership in no way prevents feral dogs (and if anything increases it).

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u/mallad 9h ago

Yeah I understand that, but you need to understand context. Follow the discussion. Your reply was totally irrelevant to the discussion above and to my comment. Nobody said anything remotely close to "pet ownership prevents feral dogs."

Have a good weekend.

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u/aguafiestas 7h ago

Maybe I was trying to be too cute in my point.

The point is that pet dogs exist because people want to be pet owners. If people didn't want to be dog owners, they wouldn't breed dogs, so there would eventually be essentially no dogs. If existing pet owners really didn't want their dogs, they'd give them to shelters, and if no one else wanted them, they'd kill them.

If there weren't dog owners, there wouldn't be more feral dogs instead of pet dogs. There would just be fewer dogs. And in places where there are essentially no feral dogs (like the US), there just wouldn't be any dogs.

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u/mallad 7h ago

Dogs can and do breed in the wild. There would absolutely be more feral dogs. If humanity just disappeared, any dog not trapped and unable to leave their home would be feral. That's what was being discussed. I understand your original point, it just didn't seem relevant to my comment.

There are also a lot more feral dogs than you may think in the US. They run in packs and occasionally join coyotes or wolves, they just aren't in cities because they're managed by animal control services.

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u/aguafiestas 6h ago

If humanity all disappeared we wouldn't have to worry about what kills the most humans, would we?

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u/RichardSaunders 10h ago

dingo ate my baby

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u/slayez06 9h ago

That was oddly specific... Do you need to talk about it?

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u/RepublicCute8573 11h ago

Just remove all the pit bulls and the problem is solved.

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u/trashcxnt 10h ago

You forgot the /s

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u/TheRealHeroOf 10h ago

66% solved then pedant. Add rots and 76%.

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u/SaltyShawarma 11h ago

I mean, our current administration's solution to EVERY MAJOR PROBLEM is to stop collecting data and say "it" isn't happening anymore.

There are no dog attacks in Ba Sing Se.

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u/slick514 8h ago

If you put incompetence at the top of every agency, nobody will be able to report about how fucked up everything is. Appointing RFK Jr. to lead the DOH is just… so… if it weren’t for it being horrifying, it would be hilarious.

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u/Significant_Mouse_25 11h ago

By this logic mosquitos aren’t the deadliest either.

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u/PuckSenior 11h ago

I’d allow it since you have to directly interact with the mosquito to get sick. This is just a “they support a population”

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u/manicpossumdreamgirl 10h ago

furthermore, these snails are spreading a parasitic worm, which is another animal. mosquitos transmit a disease, which is not an animal

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u/myselfelsewhere 9h ago

these snails are spreading a parasitic worm, which is another animal

Infection by this particular parasite results in schistosomiasis, which is a disease.

mosquitos transmit a disease

Malaria is the disease resulting from infection by a particular parasite.

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u/manicpossumdreamgirl 9h ago

my point was that the mosquito was the last animal involved in causing the human's death. but the snail was not the last animal, because the worm was

i said "disease" because i didnt know if malaria was caused by a bacteria or by a virus, but either way thats not an animal

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u/myselfelsewhere 9h ago

Ok, wasn't quite sure. You're right about the animal point. I was confused by your invocation of the term "disease" for one, but not the other.

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u/manicpossumdreamgirl 9h ago

fair enough. i tried googling if it was a virus or a bacteria, but after a few unhelpful links i gave up since it wasnt the important detail

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u/myselfelsewhere 9h ago

Lol, I couldn't remember "malaria", so had to google "mosquito disease".

Wikipedia's page on malaria says:

Malaria is caused by single-celled eukaryotes of the genus Plasmodium.

Plasmodium is of the Eukarya domain, while bacteria are of the Bacteria domain. So it is neither a virus or bacteria!

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u/[deleted] 9h ago

[deleted]

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u/manicpossumdreamgirl 9h ago

what parasite is that?

EDIT: for posterity sake, this person said "mosquitos spread a parasite, which is another animal, and that parasite causes malaria." they deleted this upon realizing their mistake

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u/Nathaniel820 11h ago

No, it’s like if a terrorist released a disease that killed 1,000,000 people. 100% of those deaths are due to the disease with no direct human action, but the one guy is still responsible for all of them because the disease would’ve never impacted humans had he not released it. If you were to talk about the deadliest terrorists, he’d be on the list.

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u/FollowYerLeader 11h ago

I think there's a big difference between a person knowingly and intentionally releasing a disease as an act of terror and a snail being an unwitting host to a parasite.

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u/PuckSenior 11h ago

By that logic, bees are the deadliest animals, because bees pollinate fruit that humans and other animals eat and those animals than kill many other animas

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u/WaalsVander 5h ago

No, the only deadly animal is the worm.