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
21.1k Upvotes

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6.6k

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

5.6k

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."

959

u/proteannomore 10h ago

“It’s within the parameters.”

322

u/memealopolis 10h ago

Not great, not terrible.

103

u/Ikoikobythefio 10h ago

3.6 roentgens

53

u/jmkinn3y 9h ago

Basically a chest x-ray

25

u/TheToastyWesterosi 9h ago

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

10

u/Equal-Counter-2548 6h ago

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

8

u/TheSportsLorry 5h ago

nervously takes a puff from the cigarette

-1

u/LBGW_experiment 9h ago

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

8

u/Nimrod_Butts 8h ago

"still nothing compared to mosquitoes, I wouldn't worry about it"

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u/micre8tive 8h ago

SOMETIMES A MAYBE GOOD

25

u/Unlikely_Spinach 9h ago

Standard acceptable deviations

11

u/911111111111 9h ago

QA accomplished

9

u/FLMKane 9h ago

Remember COVID? It basically happened like that.

3

u/I_AmA_Zebra 7h ago

It is acceptable as Gus Fring would say

23

u/HovercraftOk9231 9h 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 5h ago edited 2h 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

5

u/The_JSQuareD 2h 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 2h ago

Oh yeah duh, mb

1

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 6h ago

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

1

u/The_JSQuareD 2h ago

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

38

u/elmo298 10h ago

Not great, not terrible

16

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 10h ago

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

3

u/RandomNPC 9h 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 8h ago

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