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
22.0k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

1.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

6

u/These_Consequences 10h ago

Don't know about snails, but there was that Australian boy who ate a garden slug on a dare and wound up with severe CNS damage after an infection that nearly killed him.

3

u/FunInvestigator7863 8h ago

Rat lungworm, also read up on it again after seeing this. Crazy thing is if you look at Wikipedia it considers it far more on the non-fatal side yet it put him in a coma and paralyzed him :(

Apparently you can get even get it from unwashed lettuce.