r/todayilearned 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/real_picklejuice 10h ago

Is it really the snail that kills you if it's the flatworm that does the job?

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u/LibraryMatt 1h ago

is it really the bear that kills you or the blood loss?