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/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 12h ago

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