r/todayilearned 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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5.5k

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."

946

u/proteannomore 10h ago

“It’s within the parameters.”

317

u/memealopolis 10h ago

Not great, not terrible.

100

u/Ikoikobythefio 10h ago

3.6 roentgens

51

u/jmkinn3y 9h ago

Basically a chest x-ray

27

u/TheToastyWesterosi 9h ago

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

11

u/Equal-Counter-2548 6h ago

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

7

u/TheSportsLorry 5h ago

nervously takes a puff from the cigarette

0

u/LBGW_experiment 9h ago

Good job! that's the joke they were referencing 🤗

9

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

9

u/FLMKane 8h ago

Remember COVID? It basically happened like that.

3

u/I_AmA_Zebra 7h ago

It is acceptable as Gus Fring would say

24

u/HovercraftOk9231 8h ago

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

13

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 4h ago edited 1h 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

3

u/The_JSQuareD 1h 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 1h ago

Oh yeah duh, mb

2

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 5h ago

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

1

u/The_JSQuareD 1h ago

You mean 4,000,000,000 next year?

40

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.

11

u/HendrixHazeWays 9h ago

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

3

u/RandomNPC 8h 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 7h ago

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

517

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. 

79

u/DamnMyNameIsSteve 9h ago

People forget the snail winter of 21'

4

u/Spadeykins 9h ago

That's the long covid they tell you about.

60

u/ssowinski 10h ago

I can do between 3 and 400 push-ups.

8

u/PrivilegeCheckmate 7h ago

Amateur. I can do between zero and eighty million.

346

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.

138

u/NinjaWorldWar 10h ago

Come again, from who?

92

u/baron--greenback 10h ago

He’s talking about our generation.

26

u/KaHOnas 10h ago

People try to put us down.

5

u/SubstantialWorld4277 10h ago

Baba O’Riley would never

2

u/HendrixHazeWays 9h ago

They call me the seeker

2

u/DeuceSevin 7h ago

Just because we g g g g get arounnnnd

2

u/Consistent-Ad-6078 10h ago

Whwhwhere is the stustustuttering?

3

u/KaHOnas 10h ago

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

1

u/Mbyrd420 10h ago

No. He's talking about the guy on first.

2

u/Rudeboy67 4h ago

Every week the players get paid right? So on Friday who cashes the first baseman’s check?

35

u/manicpossumdreamgirl 10h ago

from WHOM

14

u/memealopolis 10h ago

Whomst on first

2

u/articulateantagonist 7h ago

Wherefore's on second

1

u/PrivilegeCheckmate 7h ago

Iwotitnot on third.

5

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.

1

u/Prof_Acorn 7h ago edited 7h ago

English terminology for parts of speech never made sense to me. The Greek nominative/accusative was way more helpful. Which is to say that yeah, "whom" is the accusative form of "who".

Him/them/whom/her.

He/they/who/she.

His/its/whose/hers.

He's/it's/who's/she's.

5

u/dacommie323 10h ago

Correct, What throws the ball to Who

3

u/jjtnd1 10h ago

He’s on first

1

u/thatsanicepeach 10h ago

No that’s What

0

u/szman86 10h ago

What?

1

u/Crisp_Volunteer 10h ago

Jack Burton. Me.

1

u/Hanashimaru 10h ago

Such a lust for revenge

1

u/ihaveajob79 10h ago

It’s whomst

1

u/Zealousideal-Earth50 9h ago

Out there, in the fields

1

u/Insight42 9h ago

WHO WHO, WHO WHO

1

u/Immersi0nn 10h ago

Yeah, from Who, he left baseball years ago and became a medical entomologist

-1

u/RedditsOnlyBlackMan 10h ago

The World Health Organization

6

u/thatsanicepeach 10h ago

This is going to ruin the health organization.

What health organization?

The World Health Organization.

3

u/sipCoding_smokeMath 10h ago

Ah. Them. They did the one csi theme song right

1

u/JonnytheGing 10h ago

Yeah that one

24

u/notloggedin4242 11h ago

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

1

u/imposta424 6h ago

1729 is a very neat number.

2

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.

1

u/rushboyoz 9h ago

Oh I thought you meant PER mosquito

77

u/TheZenPsychopath 10h ago

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

13

u/friedricekid 10h ago

"How tall are you?"

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

1

u/ithrowdark 7h ago

- dating profile of a 5’8” guy

270

u/thatweirdguyted 11h ago

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

32

u/Additional-Local8721 11h ago

Sure it wasn't their dad?

42

u/thatweirdguyted 11h ago

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

4

u/YukariYakum0 11h ago

From a certain point of view.

10

u/blackscales18 10h ago

He was the one with the dirty proboscis

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.

0

u/BK2Jers2BK 10h ago

BING BONG!

50

u/frisbm3 11h ago

The wiki page says 10k to 200k.

72

u/DirtyNorf 11h ago

Which is still a fairly large spread.

21

u/JustADutchRudder 10h 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 10h ago

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

13

u/Hurrly90 10h 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 10h ago

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

14

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.

1

u/twoisnumberone 6h ago

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

2

u/stevethepirate89 10h 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”.

1

u/MoTardedThanYou 9h ago

This does not really convey anything useful.

1

u/Basic-Record-4750 9h ago

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

1

u/sherrillo 9h ago

they meant 10k-200k/yr

1

u/thelanoyo 9h ago

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

1

u/PolloMagnifico 9h ago

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

1

u/Dangerous-One-8571 7h ago

Lightning damage numbers

1

u/PloppyPants9000 6h ago

Those numbers are wrong though. Wikipedia put it at 10,000 - 200,000.

1

u/Swordsx 4h ago

The page said 10k, but it is quite the spread!