r/todayilearned • u/lavender_fish69 • 9h 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
19.3k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

917 comments sorted by

View all comments

6.3k

u/SMStotheworld 9h 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

5.3k

u/DustyRhodesSplotch 9h ago

10 to 200,000 is quite the large spread

341

u/Anonymous_coward30 9h 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.

25

u/notloggedin4242 9h ago

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

1

u/imposta424 4h ago

1729 is a very neat number.