I’m an english teacher, and today a student asked me what a Mink was. After googling the translation into our language, we started talking about rodents as pets and rabies came up. I told them some facts I knew about it and then the same student asked a very good question: How do the rabid wild animals get the rabies to begin with? Where does the rabies virus originate?
I then realised I don’t know the answer, so I told him that now he has something interesting to look up, and so do I. I would like to know the answer before our next class a couple days from now, so I went on google and skimmed through some articles, wikipedia and whatnot. I couldn’t find it!
So, since I don’t really know how to look for this information in depth, I figured I’d ask here. Could any virologists, vets or people wise in the matter explain, please?
Thanks in advance!
In: Biology
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They get bit by another rabid animal which itself got bit by another. And there are some animals, such as bats, that have a high tolerance for rabies and can pass it on to larger animals without feeling many ill effects from the virus.
The most common way for an animal to get the rabies virus is from getting bitten by an infected animal.
Rabies is relatively common in the wild and is carried by a lot of different animals like bats, raccoons, skunks, and foxes. It’s also associated with farm dogs as outdoor pets are more prone to getting bitten.
Unfortunately by the time an animal is showing symptoms the disease has progressed too far and is almost always fatal. Since animals infected with Rabies are often aggressive they have to be put down to prevent them from infecting anything else.
*Rabies virus causes an acute encephalitis in all warm-blooded hosts and the outcome is almost always fatal. The first symptoms of rabies may be nonspecific and include lethargy, fever, vomiting, and anorexia. Signs progress within days to cerebral dysfunction, cranial nerve dysfunction, ataxia, weakness, paralysis, seizures, difficulty breathing, difficulty swallowing, excessive salivation, abnormal behavior, aggression, and/or self-mutilation.*
Since you are speaking with children, this is the key point for them:
Humans in the west ~~are typically vaccinated~~ can be vaccinated for Rabies even at a young age. But cases of human rabies in the United States are very rare, with only 1 to 3 cases reported annually. So the likelihood of you getting infected is almost non-existent. If you get bitten by a wild animal you should consult a doctor, but the chances of that animal having rabies is very very small so no reason to panic about it.
On a side note rabies may be the source of the werewolf myth. People getting bitten by a rapid dog or wolf taking on wolf like characteristics and rage before eventually die a rather horrifying death…
I recommend [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4u5I8GYB79Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4u5I8GYB79Y) for its very comprehensive yet simple explanation.
Rabies is great at avoiding our regular disease defenses. It spreads in the wild the same way it spreads in captivity – saliva. After infecting the brain, the virus moves down into the mouth and into the saliva to be transmitted again. Animals in the wild bite each other. The symptoms rabies causes like foaming at the mouth (inability to swallow) and added aggression/confusion all help it spread better. Like a lot of viruses, the symptoms are the vector. If you’re asking how the virus ended up in wild populations, we don’t quite know. It’s a very simple virus; it only has 5 genes.
So, rabies as a virus isn’t very unique really. there are a lot of viruses that infect nerve tissue just like it does. Many of them nearly identical.
When you have two similar viruses infecting the same cell, they can sort of exchange parts of themselves with each other. This can give them new tools to work with that let them do what they do better.
Rabies specifically came from a virus that infected bats. During one of these exchanges, the virus gained the tools it needed to infect certain other mammals. And that virus ends up becoming rabies.
As for how the bats got it, it was likely through the same process. But its really hard to find out where because it happened a long time ago, at least a thousand years. We can assume if we go back far enough, we’ll find a virus that infects nerves but doesn’t kill the host. and that would eventually mutate into the harmful form we have now.
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