How exactly the symptom of rabies, the fear of water, the hydrophobia works?

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One of the rabies symptoms is a fear of water, also called a hydrophobia.

Wikipedia article on rabies even shows a diseased trying to drink water but still unable to.

My question is: how it works on the biological level? Is it happening in consciousness, subconsciousness, or where? How does the sickness knows the water is approaching the mouth? How? Can one trick the sickness by making person close their eyes? Or by putting water in a closed box and then moving it towards the patient? Etc?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

I remember reading that it’s not actually hydrophobia. The parasitic virus causes the host to experience extreme pain when trying to swallow anything. So it’s a fear of pain from swallowing anything that the host experiences.

After reaching the brain the virus moves to the salivary glands and saliva where it waits to be transferred to another host.

The pain it creates from swallowing is to keep the mouth flooded with saliva so that the virus has the best chance of survival.

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