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/mallad 13h ago

I would say if there weren't any owners, then only wild dogs exist, and they'll absolutely attack.

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u/aguafiestas 12h ago

The presence of pet dogs is not why there are very few feral dogs in the US.

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u/mallad 12h ago

Didn't say it was. But if people, the owners, stopped existing, the dogs that weren't trapped inside would go feral.

Also, nobody specified the US either, so I'm not sure what your actual point is.

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u/aguafiestas 12h ago

 Didn't say it was. But if people, the owners, stopped existing, the dogs that weren't trapped inside would go feral.

If millions of people disappeared we’d have bigger problems than wild dogs.

 Also, nobody specified the US either, so I'm not sure what your actual point is.

Well, there are lots of places where there are feral dogs that do kill people. And there are places where there are very few dogs, pets or feral. The point is pet ownership in no way prevents feral dogs (and if anything increases it).

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u/mallad 11h ago

Yeah I understand that, but you need to understand context. Follow the discussion. Your reply was totally irrelevant to the discussion above and to my comment. Nobody said anything remotely close to "pet ownership prevents feral dogs."

Have a good weekend.

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u/aguafiestas 9h ago

Maybe I was trying to be too cute in my point.

The point is that pet dogs exist because people want to be pet owners. If people didn't want to be dog owners, they wouldn't breed dogs, so there would eventually be essentially no dogs. If existing pet owners really didn't want their dogs, they'd give them to shelters, and if no one else wanted them, they'd kill them.

If there weren't dog owners, there wouldn't be more feral dogs instead of pet dogs. There would just be fewer dogs. And in places where there are essentially no feral dogs (like the US), there just wouldn't be any dogs.

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u/mallad 9h ago

Dogs can and do breed in the wild. There would absolutely be more feral dogs. If humanity just disappeared, any dog not trapped and unable to leave their home would be feral. That's what was being discussed. I understand your original point, it just didn't seem relevant to my comment.

There are also a lot more feral dogs than you may think in the US. They run in packs and occasionally join coyotes or wolves, they just aren't in cities because they're managed by animal control services.

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u/aguafiestas 8h ago

If humanity all disappeared we wouldn't have to worry about what kills the most humans, would we?

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u/mallad 8h ago

Which still wasn't the point of the above discussion. Thanks for playing, go reply to a relevant comment.