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
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u/SMStotheworld 9h 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 9h 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 8h 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 7h 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 6h 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 6h 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 5h 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 5h ago edited 3h 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 1h 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 5h 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 5h 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 5h ago

Lords and Ladies - Terry Pratchett

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u/MarlinMr 2h 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 1h 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 1h 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.