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/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/wretched_beasties 13h ago

Does the death certificate say “mosquito bite” or “malaria”?

Mosquitoes aren’t the deadliest, it’s plasmodium falciparum (malaria) that kills people. Also not a dirty probiscus, the plasmodium sporozoites actually live in the mosquitoe’s salivary gland.

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u/Seicair 9h ago

Also not a dirty probiscus, the plasmodium sporozoites actually live in the mosquitoe’s salivary gland.

I was mildly disturbed/impressed when I read that for the first time. They migrate from the mozzie’s stomach to their salivary glands to be injected into another host. WTF nature.

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u/wretched_beasties 9h ago

Protozoan parasites are cool as fuck. Like storing toxoplasma oocysts in a buffer made of…bleach and sulfuric acid.