50 Fun Facts About Rabies

What does the Latin word rabies mean?

Madness, rage or fury is what the Romans meant by rabies, from rabere, 'to rave'; the same Latin word, passing through Old French, also gave English 'rage'.

By what name was rabies historically known, from victims' panic at being offered a drink?

Hydrophobia, 'fear of water': even the sight of a glass can set off violent, painful spasms, so a patient who is desperately thirsty recoils from it in terror.

Dogs cause about 99% of human rabies cases; what does the WHO call the most cost-effective way to prevent them?

Vaccinating dogs en masse stops the virus where it starts, so people are never bitten by a rabid animal in the first place; treating victims one at a time can't do that.

What is the usual incubation period between infection and first symptoms in humans?

One to three months is typical, but a bite on the face acts faster than one on the foot, because the virus has to creep along the nerves to reach the brain.

What should you do first if bitten by an animal that might have rabies?

Wash the wound with soap and water for a full 15 minutes, then get to a clinic for the vaccine: the scrub is the first step of the treatment that stops rabies taking hold.

By the most-cited estimate, roughly how many people die of rabies worldwide each year?

59,000 is the most-quoted estimate, but the true toll is uncertain: weak surveillance and misdiagnosis mean many deaths in Africa and Asia are never counted.

Counting the rabies-like viruses carried by bats, which is the only continent free of rabies?

Antarctica: even 'rabies-free' Australia doesn't qualify, because its bats carry a close cousin of the virus that has infected and killed people since 1996.

A Spanish neurologist argued in 1998 that rabies outbreaks inspired the legend of which monster?

The vampire: Juan Gómez-Alonso noted that rabid people may bite others and recoil from strong smells such as garlic, and that Balkan vampire scares followed rabies outbreaks.

Why do rabies victims 'foam at the mouth'?

Saliva overproduction and inability to swallow do it together: spit pours out while agonising throat spasms stop any of it going down, so it froths at the lips.

How long after first symptoms does death usually occur?

Two to ten days is typical, and nothing reliably helps by then: once symptoms start, treatment is comfort care.

To which genus of viruses does the rabies virus belong?

Lyssavirus borrows the ancient Greek word for rage, which was also the Greeks' own name for the disease; nearly all of the genus's other members are carried by bats.

What shape is the rabies virus?

A bullet, with one rounded end and one flat: the look is so distinctive that the virus’s whole family is named Rhabdoviridae, from the Greek for ‘rod’.

Humans have about 20,000 genes; how many does the rabies virus have?

5 genes, labelled N, P, M, G and L, are its entire toolkit, thousands of times smaller than ours, yet enough to take over a nervous system and kill almost every host.

Which receptor, found where nerves meet muscle, is the rabies virus thought to use to enter nerves?

Acetylcholine receptor: once inside the nerve ending, the virus rides backwards up the fibre on the cell's own transport motors, heading for the spinal cord and brain.

Where does the virus migrate after infecting the brain, ready to reach the next host?

The salivary glands: after multiplying in the brain, the virus travels back out along other nerves and into the saliva, which is why a single bite is enough to pass it on.

Which small animals are almost never found infected with rabies?

Rodents and rabbits: a bite from a squirrel, rat or pet hamster almost never calls for rabies shots, and in the US none is known to have given a person the disease.

What is thought to explain why the Virginia opossum so rarely catches rabies?

Its lower body temperature is the usual explanation, as the virus seems to fare best in warmer hosts; the opossum's open-mouthed, drooling hiss looks rabid but is pure bluff.

In which marine mammals was rabies found spreading in South Africa in 2024?

Cape fur seals: surfers were bitten by oddly aggressive seals before tests confirmed rabies, which scientists suspect came from the black-backed jackals that hunt seal pups on shore.

Through what route have the only documented human-to-human rabies transmissions occurred?

Organ transplants: corneas and organs from donors who died of undiagnosed rabies have infected their recipients, yet spread through a patient's bite has never once been confirmed.

What are the nerve-cell inclusions that are 100% diagnostic for rabies called?

Negri bodies: spotting them in a brain sample clinches the diagnosis, but many rabid brains show none at all, so failing to find them proves nothing.

Which laboratory method has long been the gold standard for confirming rabies?

The fluorescent antibody test: antibodies tagged with a glowing dye stick to the virus in a tissue sample, so infected tissue lights up under the microscope.

In To Kill a Mockingbird, who shoots the rabid dog staggering down the street?

Atticus Finch: the sheriff hands him the rifle and he drops the dog with his first shot, stunning his children, who never knew their bookish father was once the best shot in the county.

Who was the nine-year-old boy whose 1885 treatment made Pasteur's rabies vaccine famous?

Joseph Meister had been mauled by a rabid dog; Pasteur, a chemist with no medical licence, risked prosecution by treating him, but the boy never fell ill.

The boy whose 1885 treatment made Pasteur's rabies vaccine famous later took what humble job at the Pasteur Institute?

Caretaker: he grew up to look after the institute that donations from a grateful public had built, and stayed until his death in 1940.

From which animals' nerve tissue was Pasteur's original vaccine harvested?

Rabbits: the virus was grown in their spinal cords, and strips of the infected tissue were then left to dry for up to ten days until it was too weak to cause the disease.

World Rabies Day falls on 28 September, the anniversary of what?

Louis Pasteur's death in 1895 fixed the date: the day honours the French chemist who developed the first rabies vaccine and turned a death sentence into a preventable disease.

In the US, what usually happens to a healthy-looking pet dog after it bites someone?

Watched for ten days: if the dog is still healthy at the end, it could not have passed on rabies when it bit, and the person it bit is spared the shots.

Rabies vaccine takes days to work, so what is injected around the bite to fight the virus meanwhile?

Ready-made antibodies, known as rabies immune globulin, protect at once but only briefly, covering the gap until the vaccine has taught the body to make its own.

Where on the body were old-style rabies shots injected?

The abdomen: shots in the belly are a thing of the past, and in the US today's course is just four ordinary jabs in the upper arm.

What experimental treatment puts symptomatic patients into an induced coma?

The Milwaukee protocol was hailed when a 15-year-old survived in 2004, but it has rarely worked since, and a 2016 review bluntly called it a failed approach that should be abandoned.

In The Office, Michael Scott's charity fun run for rabies begins after he hits which co-worker with his car?

Meredith Palmer: in hospital she turns out to have possibly been exposed to rabies, so a guilty Michael stages a five-kilometre run for the cause, and over half the money raised goes on the giant-cheque ceremony.

The first person known to survive rabies unvaccinated was bitten by a bat where?

In a church: a bat swooped through a 2004 service and 15-year-old Jeanna Giese picked it up to carry it outside, when it nipped her finger. Nobody thought of rabies until she fell ill weeks later.

How many people are known to have survived symptomatic rabies?

Fewer than 50: medicine has recorded only a few dozen survivors in all, many of them left with lasting brain damage, against tens of thousands of deaths every year.

What kind of Mesopotamian text holds the oldest known record of rabies?

A code of laws: the Laws of Eshnunna, from what is now Iraq, heavily fined any owner who had been warned his dog was mad and still let it bite someone who then died.

Which animals can catch rabies and pass it on?

Any mammal at all can catch rabies and pass it on, from cattle to people, though a few meat-eaters do most of the spreading. Birds and reptiles are not known to spread it.

Which everyday expression began as a folk remedy for the bite of a rabid dog?

Hair of the dog: short for 'the hair of the dog that bit you'. From Pliny's Rome onward, healers pressed the biting dog's hairs into the wound, and drinkers later borrowed the phrase for a morning-after cure.

Which is the only US state that is free of rabies?

Hawaii: the virus has never taken hold in the islands, and the state guards that record by holding arriving dogs and cats that fail its entry checks in quarantine for up to 120 days.

How was a St Hubert's key used on rabid-dog bites?

Pressed on red-hot: the nail-shaped irons, issued by the saint's abbey in the Ardennes, seared the bite, and dogs were branded with them as a safeguard. The custom lasted into the early 1900s.

How did Switzerland wipe out rabies in its foxes?

Chicken heads laced with vaccine: from 1978 the Swiss scattered them for foxes to eat, the first campaign of its kind, and some 30 European countries went on to copy the idea with factory-made baits.

Which country has long had the world's highest death toll from rabies?

India: the WHO long put its toll near 20,000 deaths a year, about a third of the world's total, nearly all from dog bites. A recent national survey suggests it has since fallen below 6,000.

What mass hysteria hinders rabies treatment in the country with the most cases?

Bite victims believe puppies are growing inside them and turn to faith healers.

Which domestic animal is most often found rabid in the United States today?

Cats: they are now reported rabid about four times as often as dogs, and nearly every infected pet turns out never to have been vaccinated. Wild animals still make up over 90% of cases.

Which brush with a bat can call for rabies shots even with no bite felt?

Waking to one in the bedroom: a bat's teeth are so fine that a sleeper can be bitten without knowing it, so US doctors treat the encounter as a possible bite and usually give the shots.

Which wild animal is the main carrier of rabies along the US East Coast, from Florida to Canada?

Raccoons: they carry their own strain of the virus from Florida to Canada and inland to the Appalachians, and about one in ten that tangles with a person or pet there proves rabid.

What links every death from classic rabies in Britain since 1902?

Infected abroad: usually by a dog bite on their travels. Britain cleared rabies from its own land animals by 1922, and its few cases since have all been imported.

In Stephen King's Cujo, what breed is the family pet that rabies turns into a killer?

Saint Bernard: big, good-natured Cujo chases a rabbit into a small cave, where a rabid bat nips his nose, and he has never had his shots.

What attacks the family in Old Yeller, dooming the dog?

A rabid wolf: Old Yeller fights it off to save the family but is bitten in the struggle, and young Travis must shoot the dog he has come to love.

Rabies is one theory for the mysterious 1849 death of which American writer?

Edgar Allan Poe: he was found delirious in Baltimore and died four days later. A doctor argued in 1996 that the symptoms fit rabies, one of many rival theories that run from drink to election-gang 'cooping'.

The 'dumb' form of rabies, a progressive paralysis, resembles which other neurological condition?

Guillain-Barré: both bring a spreading paralysis, so the quiet fifth of rabies cases, which usually lack the famous terror of water, are easily mistaken for it.

Who makes up four in ten of the world's rabies deaths?

Children under 15: they make up about 40% of the tens of thousands killed each year, nearly all of them bitten by dogs in Africa and Asia.