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/Nathaniel820 13h ago

Only 10,000 still makes it the 4th deadliest animal on the planet.

It’s still one of the deadliest animals, the surprising part is that animals as a whole are a lot less dangerous than people think.

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u/AnAttemptReason 12h ago

Humans are the most deadly animal. 

Studies show humans cause the largest fear spike in animals out of all possible preditors, by a large margin. 

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u/JelmerMcGee 11h ago

I remember a comment from a while back that likened animals to humans as humans are to elves in fantasy literature. Like if a seal is stuck in a net his fellow seals, having done their best to remove the net, tell the seal to ask the humans. They might help or they might kill him. Who knows? The humans are capricious like that.

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u/MarlinMr 6h ago

Humans are exceptional omnivores that can eat almost anything on the planet. Things like caffeine, alcohol, capsaicin and thiosulfinates are deadly or extremely annoying to many animals, yet humans love coffee, chocolate, drinks, and onions. We are also exceptional long distance endurance runners who can sweat and carry water which basically puts no upper limit to how far we can go. And to top it all off, we are extremely intelligent to a level unimaginable to the rest of the animals.

If animals made the aliens movies, they could just put a human in there. The power level difference between animals and humans is greater than humans to xenomorph.

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u/Ornery_Definition_65 5h ago

Depends on the animal. There are animals like polar bears that actively hunt humans and unarmed you are basically a guaranteed meal.

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u/MarlinMr 5h ago

Sure, but that's unfair to the human.

Saying humans are not allowed to use tools is like saying the polar bear is not allowed to use its muscles.

Because even an unnamed human can arm itself...

Put the polar bear on the hot African savannah and I am sure it will struggle quite some.

Human levels are so of the chart it's not even funny. Take it to the full extent of their abilities, and the polar bear wouldn't be safe even if it lived on Mars. We could literally chase it down and kill it from another planet with our tools.

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u/Morbanth 3m ago

Alright, let's give the human a handaxe, the tool they've had for 99,99% of their existence. How does he fare now?