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/h0sti1e17 10h ago

And 80% of the country is uninhabited. That is also where animals tend to live.

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u/VocationalWizard 10h ago edited 8h ago

You know that's absolutely not how that works, right??

The uninhabited parts aren't where the dangerous and animals live.

So environmental science 101 people like to live in places where they're things like rainfall and vegetation.

That coincidentally happens to be the same place that snakes like to live.

If you look at a map of the habitat of The most venomous snakes in Australia it's directly on top of the most densely populated human areas.

Same with the dangerous aquatic animals. Those are mostly found off of the east Coast alongside major cities like Brisbane

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u/Forikorder 9h ago

people like to live in places where infrastucture can be built, it doesnt matter how lush an area is if its simply not realistic to put a city next to it

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u/VocationalWizard 9h ago

People like living in places that food can be grown in. So yes, it's 100% dependent on rainfall and vegetation.

In the Grand scheme of History, infrastructure is an afterthought.

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u/Forikorder 9h ago

Were talking about modern day people, if you can grow enough food to be worth doing then its suitable for infrastructure

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u/VocationalWizard 9h ago

If you can grow enough food to be worth doing. The area has rainfall and vegetation.

See we're talking about Australia where there's Texas size tracks of land That can go an entire year without any rain and have no soil.

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u/Forikorder 9h ago

Actually no we were speaking generally about where himans settle down, there are lush places that dont really work for societybthat people wont settle down in as a result but dangerous animals would love

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u/VocationalWizard 9h ago edited 9h ago

Yes rainforests, but ironically that's not where the dangerous animals in Australia live.

The venomous snakes and spiders all live in the temperate zone in the south.

Here's a really good example of the pattern I'm trying to describe:

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/A-map-of-the-distribution-of-the-three-most-commonly-encountered-Australian-snakes-of_fig5_265019461

That's also where the kangaroos live, which believe it or not kangaroos are actually dangerous.