It’s actually my favourite illness period. I’m pretty sure it’s not that normal to have a favourite pathogen.

Rabies is a well known virus, deadly, and scary.

Rabies is transmitted through an open wound or mucus membrane coming into contact with the infection. The most common form of transmission is via bite by a non-human animal.

The animals that carry and transmit rabies most often (in North America, at least) are bats, racoons, skunks, dogs/canines, and foxes.

bats and skunks have quite a high chance of being a carrier, which is someithing I didn’t always know. I defintly am more careful around bats and skunks now.

On that note; if you ever find a bat on the ground, injured or stunned (like, in my case, cuaght by a cat, or run into a window), make sure you handle it in a way thatprevent the bat from being able to bite you. Bats have small teeth, people are often unaware of bites they may get. So be like me, use thick material to shield you from the animal.

symptoms

The symptoms of rabies are;

hyper-agression

drooling

disorentitnation

anxiety, stress, and tension,

convulsions,

unusually intense sensation at infection site (bite mark)

excitability

loss of feeling in parts of the body

muscle spasms and loss of muscle function,

low fever,

numbess adn tingling,

pain at wound site

problems swallowing

light sensitivity

hydrophobia

and many more.

Details

Tehre’s two types of rabies judgde by symptoms, dumb rabies, and furius rabies. Dumb rabies doesnt include the agression bits of the disease, and furious rabies is the scary attacking everyone one.



the drooling is caused by difficulty swallowing.

Did you know that after examining the remains of people said to have been werewolves in the dark ages, researchers found signs of rabies in many of them? It makes sense, if you think about it, hyper-agression = acting like an angry dangerous wolf, sensitivity to light = they came out at night, shied from light, drooling like an angry wolf.

SO, rabies, when untreated, has always resulted in death, except once, in an instance that i could write an entire essay on, so I won’t go into it. It’s on the rabies wiki page.

SO if you are EVER bitten by a strange animal, ALWAYS assume it’d given you rabies. No, I don’t mean you should freak out and say your goodbyes, I mean call 911, (or your local emergancy number) and wash the wound. Get to the ER FAST.

HOW IT WORKS

So, rabies kills you by attacking your Central Nervous System (CNS). And it destroys it. So that’s why even if you cure it, rabies Can still leave you with serious damage.

this nervous system destruction is why you get all the nerological sysptoms. Obviously.

COOL FAX

There’s only ONE other possible way to survive rabies without getting the rabies shots. see here http://biomedicalephemera.tumblr.com/post/11847807056/the-girl-who-survived-rabies

ALSO

I can’t find much on it, but i’ve also talked to vet/ vet students about how AWESOME wolves are in regards to rabies;

So, sometime in the mid 1900s rabies got into the US wolf population, and the scientists tracking the disease were like, ‘OH SHIT, THE WOLVES ARE GONNA SPREAD IT REAL FAST ALL OVER NORTH AMERICA, WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE, GET IN THE BOMB/RABIES SHELTER! EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF!“ And so they waited. And waited. And found that the virus wasn’t spreading NEARLY as fast or or far as they had thought. They didn’t know why.

it turns out, the social structure of a wolf pack is SO strong, that an infected wolf DYING FROM RABIES will not attack a superior member of the pack. I’m not soo sure that’s true, but the other factor sounds more likely; that wolves are quick to shun and cast out any wolf that they think is sick. So, basically, wolf social structure saved North America. On behalf of the wolves, YOU’RE WELCOME EVERYONE.

Also, I thought I’d also seen that ^^ on at least wikipedia, but I canna find it, but I PROMISE I DID read it somewhere. I KNOW I didn’t make it up. .. TO THE TEXTBOOKS!