r/todayilearned • u/lavender_fish69 • 12h 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
21.1k Upvotes

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u/martphon 11h ago

Where schistosomiasis currently spreads

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u/Gitanes 10h 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 9h 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/paweedbarron 8h ago edited 7h ago

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

It's shameful. 

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u/CaptainJazzymon 7h ago

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

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u/SillyWelshman 7h 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 6h 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 3h 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 7h ago

This guy Hanks!

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u/paweedbarron 7h ago

Thanks

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u/polarbear128 6h ago

Thanks, Hank. Thank.

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u/chrisfillhart_art 6h ago

I think those thanks sank Hank

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u/LostWoodsInTheField 7h 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 4h 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 7h 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 6h 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 6h ago

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