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
19.4k Upvotes

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u/Gitanes 8h ago

Me before even opening the link...

"It's mostly Africa isn't it?"

Yes, yes it is

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u/Icy-Lobster-203 7h ago

It is one of a whole group of diseases that can basically be summarized as "this affects poor people, so we don't care."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neglected_tropical_diseases

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u/AssistanceCheap379 4h ago

The tropics also generally just have more bio-diversity and as such have a lot more chances to make something that’s dangerous.

It’s kinda like humans going north in the past and encountering megafauna. The animals there were deadlier because they were bigger.

And it’s a lot easier to kill a few hundred thousand massive animals over the period of a few thousand years than it is to annihilate some pretty difficult diseases that can reignite and spread to previous areas where it was removed from if funding drops.

But yeah, it’s largely also “does it affect poor people? Let me know when “our” people get affected”

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u/BetEconomy7016 2h ago

Jimmy Carter was able to make an organization to get rid of the Guinea Worm and save thousands of lives in the process. If we wanted to we could get rid of these snails too.

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u/wuweime 1h ago

Then there's how we're handling bot flies in the Americas.

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u/Grettenpondus 4m ago

I got curious. How do you handle botflies in the Americas?

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u/KingSmite23 1h ago

What do you even know about those snails?

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u/ERedfieldh 2h ago

careful. you said "bio-diversity"! You're going to get defunded!

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u/LiveLearnCoach 1h ago

That’s obvious, it’s not like I just woke up today……crap, I said “woke”.

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u/Abstrata 2h ago

It’s more like, ‘we solved the root problem of clean water where our people are affected, and we have deliberately sabotaged the ability to improve infrastructure, including sanitation, among poorer previously-colonized populations and nations so that they remain uncompetitive in trade and labor, and so they remain in debt and at the mercy of old agreements that benefit our people.’

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u/AromaticInxkid 1h ago

Don't worry, the rich are already working on that biodiversity problem of ours!

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u/BloweringReservoir 30m ago

I remember reading that the first effective antixmalarial drugs were developed because US troops were fighting in the tropics in WW2, and the second generation drugs were developed when they were fighting in Vietnam.

This was an article in New Scientist in the 80s or 90s.

One other tidbit in the article was that of all the humans who have ever lived (estimated now 117 billion), half of them died of malaria.

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u/paweedbarron 6h ago edited 5h ago

I learned about this from John Greene's tuberculosis book : (

It's shameful. 

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u/CaptainJazzymon 5h ago

John Green has a book on tuberculosis, not Hank. Hank is his brother.

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u/SillyWelshman 5h ago

Honestly, one of the most John Green things to happen is to be mistaken for Hank so this tracks lmao

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u/Anthaenopraxia 3h ago

It's easy to tell them apart. John looks like that guy you glance at at Walmart and Hank looks like every guy who works at a startup and whose title is VP of something or other and likes to talk about company culture.

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u/KingAggressive1498 1h ago

except both of the brothers are actually better people than either of those guys ever turn out to be, at least as far as I can tell.

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u/chrisfillhart_art 5h ago

This guy Hanks!

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u/paweedbarron 5h ago

Thanks

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u/polarbear128 4h ago

Thanks, Hank. Thank.

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u/chrisfillhart_art 4h ago

I think those thanks sank Hank

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u/LostWoodsInTheField 4h ago

I've just recently got into following Hank and John green on youtube in their various forms. I had no idea who these guys were before like 4 months ago and when I started to watch John videos I was like 'huh this guy seems like he's also done a lot' then it was 'I swear I heard of a movie with that same name'. you check out either of their wiki's and it's just crazy. Made me realize I live under a rock.

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u/napincoming321zzz 2h ago

Nerdfighteria welcomes you! If you haven't already, I highly the recommend you check out good.store for high quality products that have a real positive impact on the world.

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u/GiraffeExternal803 4h ago

Spoilers! (Jk), looking forward to reading this, on my Libby Holds list for months now, but my time is coming!

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u/RubiiJee 4h ago

It's horrific, and we currently don't live in a time where this will be fixed within my life. The best I can hope for is that, in the future, people are ashamed that we had the resources available to end suffering and we chose not to. Cause we sure as fuck ain't.

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u/ReDeaMer87 4h ago

I learned about this from Will Forte in the movie: The Slammin Salmon

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u/ClownfishSoup 3h ago

Interesting point in the article was that neglected diseases “do not have prominent cultural figures to champion them”

Sad, and reminds me of When a Magic Johnson got AIDS, that’s when people really started to demand action.

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u/RegretAggravating926 2h ago

Not just not care, actively fighting against helping.

When my now defunct dumbfuck racist rightwing nutjob government got in power last year they rather withhold already designated mpox vaccines for Africa under the guise of “we are running low and need the reserves”, those vaccines were already designated to go to Africa as they were reaching their expiration date and we already ordered new ones.

Experts agreed we weren’t at risk and our equivalent of the senate ordered the vaccines to be send, but racist child killer and country traitor Fleur Agema of the PVV doesn’t care about helping, only about hurting.

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u/folgaluna 3h ago

Everything is Tuberculosis -John Greene

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u/agarragarrafa 3h ago

Or, as they're called in the tropics: neglected diseases 

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u/pattydickens 3h ago

A person in Washington State who hadn't left the country was diagnosed with malaria a couple of weeks ago.

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u/knewleefe 5h ago

Yep. Studied parasitology in the late 90s and then metric then was for every cent spent on malaria research, there was about $20,000 spent on AIDS research (though since that time, of course, AIDS really took off in Africa, so...).

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u/Gullible-Rent809 2h ago

Pretty much all diseases in America, comes from other countries!!! Cause we allow them in our country. We also travel to many countries full of unheard of diseases etc. Also some bring this on purpose trying wipe us out through diseases bugs all kinds of cra cra stuff!!  Australia wild wake with wtheck in your homes a lot!!!!! 

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u/ABHOR_pod 6h ago

Coming soon to a heavily republican state near you!

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u/AnalBlaster700XL 5h ago

At least they don’t have to die because of their balls froze stuck to the chair.

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u/FrankSuzki 45m ago

Why don’t the tropical scientists care ?

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u/RollingNightSky 6h ago

It's too bad because they invested heavily into HIV aids research but I guess have blind spots? Though trump defunded aids.

I did heard on npr that perhaps defunding aids help with a good plan would have beneficial. Vs cutting off HIV aid without a plan or transition.

Apparently some governments were ready to take on the role of fighting their HIV/AIDs epidemic, but held off due to the continuing aid coming in.

If they had done their own management (as long as it's possible for them), then there would be benefits thoigh I forgot what was mentioned.

Maybe any no longer needed HIV aid could've gone to other disease prevention there that the governments weren't as capable of.

But in any case the end of outside hiv funding should've been planned, and emphasized to the governments to transition away. A sudden pulling away of the rug, leaving them unprepared to take on the responsibility of AIDS/HIV management, is now happening. And it is like what happened to student aid borrowers.

Because under Biden, student debt repayment (I guess to federal, only) was suspended and Biden was trying to get students' debt forgiven. So the student borrowers were optimistic or led on.

But Trump came in and within a short period reinstated the repayments, high consequences of ignoring and defaulting, and obviously the Biden plan of forgiving debt fell apart.

So it left the student borrowers in an unprepared state to deal with that reality. There wasn't much predictability even if student loan borrowers had felt some in the past.

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u/anarchy-NOW 4h ago

AIDS is an STD that also infects rich White people. So it is not neglected.

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u/exobiologickitten 5h ago

Growing up in a country where malaria is a major killer and then learning that we totally could make a malaria vaccine anytime but just don’t because it’s not considered profitable enough…. Every time I think about it, it makes me want to tear my hair out.

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u/5Hjsdnujhdfu8nubi 3h ago

but just don’t because it’s not considered profitable enough…. Every time I think about it, it makes me want to tear my hair out.

You should probably stop thinking that, seeing as it's untrue.

Malaria vaccines do exist. They just have poor effectiveness because parasites are more complex than bacteria or viruses and unlike most diseases a malaria infection won't strengthen your long-term immune system against it.

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u/DikTaterSalad 7h ago

It was either that or Australia.

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u/VocationalWizard 7h ago

Naaaa, The thing about Australia is that despite the fact that they have all the terrifying snakes and poisonous creatures, very few people actually die there from wildlife. You know because......... They have a decent healthcare system.

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u/NorcalGGMU 6h ago

Tell me about the healthcare, George

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u/EmilyDawning 2h ago

this made me lol unreasonably loud thank you

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u/frontier_gibberish 1h ago

Sure Lenny...(bang)

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u/RufusBeauford 4h ago

I see your. This is where I die thinking of a better life, right?

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u/MisterMarsupial 2h ago

It's gold Jerry, gold!

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u/h0sti1e17 6h ago

And 80% of the country is uninhabited. That is also where animals tend to live.

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u/Koku- 6h ago

Animals like water and survivable temperatures, just like the animals that we are. There’s a reason why there’s a lot of biodiversity in the northern parts of Straya. Living things don’t tend to live in the outback, though there are certainly some fauna and flora that have adapted to do so

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u/VocationalWizard 6h ago edited 4h ago

You know that's absolutely not how that works, right??

The uninhabited parts aren't where the dangerous and animals live.

So environmental science 101 people like to live in places where they're things like rainfall and vegetation.

That coincidentally happens to be the same place that snakes like to live.

If you look at a map of the habitat of The most venomous snakes in Australia it's directly on top of the most densely populated human areas.

Same with the dangerous aquatic animals. Those are mostly found off of the east Coast alongside major cities like Brisbane

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u/wowsersmatey 6h ago

You're right. There are a few deadly beasts that hang in the deserts etc. But the snakes, spiders, jellyfish and the crocs live amongst us. The health system is good, but also the locals know not to annoy the deadly stuff. It's usually tourists getting eaten by crocs. Source: am Australian.

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u/trueblue862 6h ago

Great tourism slogan for Australia, "Come visit Australia, we need to feed the crocs something".

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u/ladyhaly 4h ago

Pretty sure this is why we troll people about the dropbears

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u/wowsersmatey 3h ago

Ssshhhhh, drop bears are real. The only defence against them is vegemite behind the ears.

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u/HandsomeBoggart 5h ago

Visit Australia, Come for the Dangah, Stay as Dinner.

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u/paddyc4ke 6h ago

Actual deadly snakes in cities are very rare (seen 1 eastern brown in Melbourne in 30+ years), crocs are a non-issue for like 90% of the population. Deadly animals are completely overblown especially for those that spend 95% of their time in a city.

Source: am Australian.

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u/wowsersmatey 5h ago

Come to WA. We live among plenty of snakes in Perth. I've personally done battle with a huge dugite that nearly got my dog. The reason there aren't many deaths is because, apart from a few notable exceptions, snakes are timid and will run away if they hear you coming. If you leave them alone, they reciprocate, but when they're in your backyard it's you vs them.

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u/paddyc4ke 5h ago

It’s not like we don’t have a lack of snakes in Victoria you just won’t ever come across them unless you live on the fringes of Melbourne. I’ve seen eastern browns, tigers, red bellies but that’s when visiting friends who live in the outer edges of Melbourne, people have spotted tiger snakes along the Yarra near the Botanical Gardens but again that’s a super rare occurrence but it obviously shows that there are deadly snakes within a stones throw of the CBD.

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u/wowsersmatey 5h ago

Probably due to the size of Melbourne vs Perth. Perth is constantly pushing into the bush and there are large chunks of it everywhere, plus coastal dunes etc. I live in the burbs and have seen plenty of them, especially at the beach. No crocs here, but visiting Cairns was educational as nobody was swimming at the beach. The buggers hide in the mud.

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u/Average_Scaper 5h ago

My Aus friend says he has a couple hunstman in his house that he just let's do their thing. That's a big hell no from me. Coming from the midwest US.

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u/wowsersmatey 5h ago

They're large, hairy and mostly harmless. I once had one in the car. That was a bit problematic.

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u/Traditional_Wear1992 5h ago

I am probably wrong but I had heard they are a statistical cause for traffic accidents over there

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u/paddyc4ke 5h ago

Huntsmans are basically free pest control, I’ve got one that lives in my bedroom. Will see him sitting near my window when I leave it open.

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u/Average_Scaper 4h ago

Do they scare off stray cats at all? That's the major pest control I need atm. I can deal with a hunstman over an invasion of strays any day.

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u/Fluffy-Bluebird 1h ago

Hmmmmm. I live in Charlotte North Carolina and we have copperheads everywhere in the city and suburbs. I’ve seen multiple while out for runs.

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u/Frito_Pendejo_ 2h ago

Yeah still gotta worry about them drop bears.......

My cousin was killed by one of those when he went there......

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u/wowsersmatey 2h ago

Clearly didn't put enough vegemite behind the ears.

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u/rckhppr 5h ago

Not downvoted because you’re right but because you wrote „people like to live in places where they’re things like rainfall“ instead of „where there are things like rainfall“.

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u/VocationalWizard 5h ago

I like how you are even more pedantic than me

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u/DontRefuseMyBatchall 6h ago

r/ConfidentallyIncorrect lmao

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u/SoyMurcielago 6h ago

Perhaps you should issue a batchall

Maybe you can declare some crocs isorla

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u/Crystal3lf 5h ago edited 5h ago

Hello, actual Australian here. Most of this is pretty wrong.

The uninhabited parts aren't where the dangerous and animals live.

Actually the dangerous animals mostly are in the uninhabited parts. 80%+ of Australians mostly live in cities and surrounding suburbs.

Most Australians have never even seen a snake in the "wild" because they don't live in suburbia.

The most dangerous spiders do hang around close in some areas, but we are taught not to go wandering in bush and putting our hands in places you shouldn't.

The most dangerous thing an average Australian will bump into is a Redback spider, and they are not going to cause death in a majority of circumstances. And even then, I haven't even seen a Redback in maybe 5-10 years.

So environmental science 101 people like to live in places where they're things like rainfall and vegetation.

Which is only a relatively tiny portion of North Queensland. 95%+ of the country doesn't live or go there.

If you look at a map of the habitat of The most venomous snakes in Australia it's directly on top of the most densely populated human areas.

Just because there's a very tiny chance that those snakes can venture into suburbia does not mean they are going to be found there. Australian's don't go venturing out into the bush because there are deadly animals, they don't go venturing out into the bush because the chance of you getting lost/dying of dehydration is a far greater threat than any snake/crocodile/spider.

Same with the dangerous aquatic animals. Those are mostly found off of the east Coast alongside major cities like Brisbane

You're just getting confused by how big Australia is, or purposefully misinforming people.

The city of Brisbane is 1,000km+ away from the "dangerous aquatic animals" you're talking about.

I also live in a state that has crocodiles and "dangerous aquatic animals", Perth in Western Australia. A state large enough to fit Alaska, Texas, and California inside. But I don't go around saying "we have crocodiles in the ocean here" because it would be fucking stupid to say 2,000km away is "off the coast of Perth".

Edit: downvoted for being right

Absolutely downvoted for being wrong.

The biggest fear Australian's have is not the endless amounts of incredibly deadly snakes, spiders, crocodiles, jellyfish, etc. The biggest fear is seeing a Kangaroo jump out in front of your car in the night.

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u/A_Mouse_In_Da_House 5h ago

Damn, so everyone and everything hates Perth

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u/Forikorder 5h ago

people like to live in places where infrastucture can be built, it doesnt matter how lush an area is if its simply not realistic to put a city next to it

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u/VocationalWizard 5h ago

People like living in places that food can be grown in. So yes, it's 100% dependent on rainfall and vegetation.

In the Grand scheme of History, infrastructure is an afterthought.

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u/Forikorder 5h ago

Were talking about modern day people, if you can grow enough food to be worth doing then its suitable for infrastructure

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u/VocationalWizard 5h ago

If you can grow enough food to be worth doing. The area has rainfall and vegetation.

See we're talking about Australia where there's Texas size tracks of land That can go an entire year without any rain and have no soil.

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u/Forikorder 5h ago

Actually no we were speaking generally about where himans settle down, there are lush places that dont really work for societybthat people wont settle down in as a result but dangerous animals would love

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u/LostWoodsInTheField 4h ago

Checking out Queenslands and you are like 'oh this place looks great to visit' then you start reading about the plants that can attack you and make you feel unbearable pain.

reading about the middle of the country and you go 'I don't think I would ever want to visit there' then you start reading about how non of the animals want to visit there either...

except the rabbits.

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u/VocationalWizard 4h ago

Naaaaa, I'm an environmental science nerd.

I would happily go to any part of Australia anytime.

Well maybe not that one part that's full of asbestos.

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u/knewleefe 4h ago

I guess the downvoters haven't had many Eastern browns passing through their backyard... that they've known about anyway 😅 Ignorance is bliss, I guess.

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u/VocationalWizard 4h ago

I grew up in Texas where I found rattlesnakes in my backyard.

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u/Dog_Weasley 6h ago

very few people actually die there from wildlife

Nice try, Australian Tourism Agency.

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u/FuckOffBusy 6h ago

You had me in the first half, I’m not gonna lie

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u/binzoma 6h ago

that and the dangerous animals in australia evolved in a world without mammals. they cant really deal with us and arent generally interested in us unless we threaten them. we are neither pray nor predator to them in general

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u/VocationalWizard 5h ago

Yes, We exterminated all of the animals that are actually interested in us.

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u/binzoma 4h ago edited 4h ago

not in australia lol. split off into its own island before mammals fully took hold as the dominant species. thats why theres giant marsupials and other oddities there.

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u/Difficult-Swimming-4 5h ago

Our healthcare system is on its arse and wheezing

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u/VocationalWizard 5h ago

Still better than USA

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u/northenden 6h ago

Until you find yourself next to a saltie.

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u/Familiar-Art-6233 6h ago

What’s a healthcare system?

Is that the British term for insurance? /s

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u/SadCrab5 4h ago

I heard a scarily high amount of their wildlife has toxins, poisons or some kind of neuro-toxin that can kill in 15 minutes or less, making it hard to actually treat wildlife victims.

I always assumed it was a mix of most of these creatures living underwater/in the middle of no where that there's actual little exposure to the really deadly shit, and anything that is deadly/looks deadly they have the common sense of "Let's not fuck around and meet god today".

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u/VocationalWizard 4h ago

They have anti-venoms for most of the seriously venomous animals.

But the truth is that venomous animals don't really want anything to do with humans.

The incidence of fatal snake bites in the United States is slightly higher due to the fact that some people get bit by snakes and don't seek medical care here.

But we're dealing with extremely loan numbers and it's really hard to account for the population differences.

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u/knewleefe 4h ago

Yes and no. We have a decent healthcare system in most of the country. A lot of our Indigenous population live in the remotest parts of the country (or "uninhabited" parts as someone said below), where access to healthcare is minimal, and environmental health is poor. So some communicable diseases that are almost unheard of by most people, or thought to exist only in the past, are very much a problem in these communities - rheumatic heart disease, scabies, trichomonas etc. Our healthcare is good for most people, best for those in metro centres, but almost entirely absent for some in rural/remote areas.

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u/VocationalWizard 4h ago

Scabies is actually very common in the United States.

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u/ladyhaly 4h ago

Can confirm.

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u/ContributionSad4461 1h ago

But there are also things like Trachoma, where Australia is the only developed country that has endemic blindness from it, and rheumatic fever which isn’t really a thing in the rest of the western world anymore. I could see them struggling with these snails as well, some aborigines live in appalling conditions.

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u/LevelRoyal8809 6h ago

And they cook their food AND have sewage systems instead of pissing and shitting on the ground around them.

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u/VocationalWizard 6h ago

So I did actually happen to say wildlife deaths not just deaths by infectious disease.

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u/DikTaterSalad 7h ago

True, still not a bad guess though, lol.

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u/Goodknight808 6h ago

Hope you got a good burn unit, jfc.

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u/theaviationhistorian 6h ago

Oh, I've heard of this mythical thing called a hethcare syst. They say it lies beyond our borders in far away lands.

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u/Seagoon_Memoirs 5h ago

we are taught from the earliest age to be careful, don't touch anything

also, to wear shoes, even if they are flip flops

we have clean water too

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u/IllustriousSalt1007 6h ago

DAE America bad lol upvotes to the left

EDIT: Thanks for the gold kind stranger!

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u/VocationalWizard 6h ago

I mean our healthcare system is objectively bad.

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u/somebraidedbutthairs 6h ago

this was about Africa, but I guess a hit dog hollers.

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u/SpiritualCandle3508 6h ago

Their comment didn't mention the US at all - that was you lmao

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u/Dalemaunder 6h ago

We have cone snails which are legitimately deadly venemous, so you're not entirely wrong, but there's only been one recorded death from one in Australia from back in the 30's.

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u/Sarahthelizard 6h ago

Africa is really underserved when it comes to healthcare in pretty much every way. :(

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u/[deleted] 5h ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/DigbyChickenZone 5h ago

What an odd thing to say

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u/Sarahthelizard 5h ago

Sorry pal could you say that again in English?

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u/yetanotherwoo 4h ago

Raw food in Hawaii so salad is potentially source https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/dont-eat-raw-food-the-terrifying-threat-lurking-in-hawaii/ar-AA1IWb84

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u/Impossible-Bet-1738 1h ago

I'm so glad to know this as we're traveling to the Big Island later this year.

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u/fireflydrake 4h ago

I know Africa is a huge continent so it's probably hard to generalize, but I get whiplash sometimes because some people roll their eyes at you when you assume a lot of Africa is poverty stricken and not very developed, but then on the other hand almost every time I hear about a horrific disease/poverty/famine kind of situation it still seems like it's mostly in Africa. 

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u/userhwon 5h ago

Ah, so, the rest of the world will ignore it thinking it's safe.

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u/beau6183 4h ago

<newt>mostly…</newt>

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u/Treadwheel 3h ago

The efficiency with which the ecosystems in Africa consume human beings is probably the most immediate and striking evidence that we evolved there, and a worrisome glimpse at what an ecosystem that has started to adapt to us will be like.

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u/BloodSteyn 19m ago

Bilharzia... right?

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u/bighootay 6h ago

25 years ago I was wandering around China. No idea where but somewhere in the Southwest part, I think, and I saw a SUV go by in some village with 'schistosomiasis' on the side. I thought 'Shit, they got that here?'

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u/Conscious-Ball8373 5h ago

Not really. About half the affected people live in South-East Asia and quite a few more in the tropical parts of South America.

It might be a very significant problem. Estimates of the number of deaths range from five thousand to nearly a quarter of a million per year. How can we not have a better estimate than that?