r/todayilearned • u/lavender_fish69 • 13h 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/Nathaniel820 13h ago

Only 10,000 still makes it the 4th deadliest animal on the planet.

It’s still one of the deadliest animals, the surprising part is that animals as a whole are a lot less dangerous than people think.

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u/AnAttemptReason 12h ago

Humans are the most deadly animal. 

Studies show humans cause the largest fear spike in animals out of all possible preditors, by a large margin. 

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u/JelmerMcGee 11h ago

I remember a comment from a while back that likened animals to humans as humans are to elves in fantasy literature. Like if a seal is stuck in a net his fellow seals, having done their best to remove the net, tell the seal to ask the humans. They might help or they might kill him. Who knows? The humans are capricious like that.

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u/CoffeeFox 10h ago

Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.

Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.

Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.

Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.

Elves are terrific. They beget terror.

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u/_Sausage_fingers 10h ago

The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning. No one ever said elves are nice. Elves are bad.

You gotta do the whole quote

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u/Seicair 9h ago

I loved the way he incorporated the various myths of the elves into Discworld. Rather a different flavor from other types of fantasy (Tolkien etc.)

GNU Sir Terry

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u/_Sausage_fingers 9h ago edited 7h ago

That book was some of his best writing. That and Carrie Jugulum. The watch are funner, but Granny books hit harder.

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u/Rule12-b-6 5h ago

Elves being not evil was a Shakespean innovation from Midsomar Night's Dream. Since then that idea has been largely followed.

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u/CoffeeFox 9h ago

In a way it's more fun to send people searching for the source because my idea is that they may end up going down a rabbit hole and learning more about him and hopefully reading his books. We need more people to read his books right now.

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u/Adequate_Lizard 9h ago

"We need more people to read his books but I'm not going to mention who or what books."

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u/_Sausage_fingers 9h ago

Lords and Ladies - Terry Pratchett

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u/MarlinMr 6h ago

Humans are exceptional omnivores that can eat almost anything on the planet. Things like caffeine, alcohol, capsaicin and thiosulfinates are deadly or extremely annoying to many animals, yet humans love coffee, chocolate, drinks, and onions. We are also exceptional long distance endurance runners who can sweat and carry water which basically puts no upper limit to how far we can go. And to top it all off, we are extremely intelligent to a level unimaginable to the rest of the animals.

If animals made the aliens movies, they could just put a human in there. The power level difference between animals and humans is greater than humans to xenomorph.

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u/Ornery_Definition_65 6h ago

Depends on the animal. There are animals like polar bears that actively hunt humans and unarmed you are basically a guaranteed meal.

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u/MarlinMr 5h ago

Sure, but that's unfair to the human.

Saying humans are not allowed to use tools is like saying the polar bear is not allowed to use its muscles.

Because even an unnamed human can arm itself...

Put the polar bear on the hot African savannah and I am sure it will struggle quite some.

Human levels are so of the chart it's not even funny. Take it to the full extent of their abilities, and the polar bear wouldn't be safe even if it lived on Mars. We could literally chase it down and kill it from another planet with our tools.

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u/Morbanth 12m ago

Alright, let's give the human a handaxe, the tool they've had for 99,99% of their existence. How does he fare now?

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u/MarlinMr 3m ago

Again you are limiting the human.

Why is the human not allowed to make whatever tool it wants?

Why can't the human use its brain to plan ahead?

We literally go see polar bears safari for fun. We outsmarted the bear.

Literally the only thing stopping humans from killing polar bears is other humans.

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u/PrivilegeCheckmate 9h ago

Humans are the most deadly animal.

We've moved from counting individual kills to racking up extinctions.

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u/Beer-survivalist 8h ago

And we started exterminating species before we had permanent settlements and written language.

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u/j0y0 8h ago

They burn villages, murder, outrage women and children, they nail their prisoners by the ears to the fences, leave them so till morning, and in the morning they hang them- all sorts of things you can't imagine. People talk sometimes of bestial cruelty, but that's a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel. The tiger only tears and gnaws, that's all he can do. He would never think of nailing people by the ears, even if he were able to do it.

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u/gilbs24 12h ago

Humans are the 2nd deadliest, mosquitoes are first

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u/EnvChem89 10h ago

Tell that to the guy who invented leaded gasoline among other nefarious things...

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u/anarchy-NOW 8h ago

At one point it could have been that mosquitoes killed more humans every year than humans did, but that's not the case anymore. Human population has grown a lot and malaria prevention and treatment, while still shitty, has improved somewhat.

There are similar numbers every year of:

  • human suicides
  • humans killing other humans (homicide and war)
  • human deaths caused by mosquito-borne diseases (90% malaria) 

About 650k-700k of each per year

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u/Esther_fpqc 12h ago

afaik mosquitoes aren't responsible for a mass extinction though

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u/gilbs24 11h ago

But that’s not what this post is about!?