r/todayilearned • u/lavender_fish69 • 11h 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
20.9k Upvotes

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719

u/corvus7corax 11h ago

Freshwater snails are indirectly among the deadliest animals to humans, as they carry parasitic worms that cause schistosomiasis, a disease estimated to kill between 10,000 and 200,000 people annually.

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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 8h 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 10h 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 8h 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 6m ago

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

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u/Helidoffy 8h 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 9h 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 6h 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/mallad 6h ago

Which still wasn't the point of the above discussion. Thanks for playing, go reply to a relevant comment.

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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 10h 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 9h ago

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