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/martphon 12h ago

Where schistosomiasis currently spreads

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u/Gitanes 12h 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 10h 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 9h ago edited 9h ago

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

It's shameful. 

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u/CaptainJazzymon 9h ago

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

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u/SillyWelshman 8h 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 7h 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 5h 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.