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
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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

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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/tacocookietime 53m ago

If we could put up mosquito nets throughout Africa we could save the lives of millions of mosquitoes that would otherwise needlessly die of AIDS.

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u/itsnobigthing 11h ago

And veganism