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
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.
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