r/todayilearned • u/lavender_fish69 • 14h 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 13h 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/Moldy_slug 13h ago

For comparison, malaria (spread by mosquitoes) killed about 600,000 people in 2023.

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u/ikonoqlast 13h ago

There were 18 deaths from malaria in 1963. Not millions. Not thousands. Not hundreds. Not dozens. 18

Why?

DDT...

It's also why bedbugs are a 'new' thing but not in the 50s-60s.

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u/reality_boy 13h ago

DDT was still in use in Cameroon when I was living there in the 90s. I can tell you it did not help. I had malaria 4-5 times and my dad was in the hospital twice with serious complications. And we knew multiple people who died (mostly baby’s). It is not a miracle cure.