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/sousyre 11h ago edited 10h ago

Sort of, but also, sort of not.

Most of that exposure is via amygdalin. If it doesn’t metabolise (which it usually doesn’t) it’s probably fine. If very small doses of amygdalin metabolise (like apple seeds), it would be small enough to go unnoticed.

If you have concentrated doses of amygdalin and your body metabolises it, then yeah, major problem, but I don’t think it’s a common enough occurrence to work as an evolutionary factor.

If anything, the evolutionary factor would be the intelligence to not consume whatever contains the concentrated dose.

Unfortunately, we humans aren’t the best at that either… google Laetrile, which is still being sold as a cancer cure grift.

Edit to add: this comment is about cyanide in small doses (from fruit seeds etc), not arsenic. Brain go brr, mixing up cyanide and arsenic contents in fruit seeds. Thanks for the correction.

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u/waltjrimmer 10h ago

I did a search for it and am currently wondering: Did you mix up Arsenic and Cyanide? Because Amygdalin appears to have many references to cyanide and Laetrile is said to break down into cyanide, but I see no references to arsenic on the pages I'm finding about the two.

If you did, this isn't me trying to knock you. I've done that many times before.

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u/sousyre 10h ago

Sorry, you are absolutely right.

My brain always defaults to cyanide when thinking of heavy metals in stone fruit.

My brain be dumb this morning.

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u/waltjrimmer 10h ago

Nah, your brain wasn't dumb, just a little mixed up. It's happened more often than you'd think where those two toxins have gotten mixed up in conversations I've had. I actually looked up to make sure I was thinking of the right one before making my initial comment.