Rabies in animals

Rabies is a viral zoonotic neuroinvasive disease which causes inflammation in the brain and is usually fatal. Rabies, caused by the rabies virus, primarily infects mammals. In the laboratory it has been found that birds can be infected, as well as cell cultures from birds, reptiles and insects. Animals with rabies suffer deterioration of the brain and tend to behave bizarrely and often aggressively, increasing the chances that they will bite another animal or a person and transmit the disease. Most cases of humans contracting the disease from infected animals are in developing nations. In 2010, an estimated 26,000 people died from rabies, down from 54,000 in 1990.

Three stages of rabies are recognized in dogs and other animals.

Bat-transmitted rabies occurs throughout North and South America but it was first closely studied in Trinidad in the West Indies. This island was experiencing a significant toll of livestock and humans alike to rabid bats. In the 10 years from 1925 and 1935, 89 people and thousands of livestock had died from it—“the highest human mortality from rabies-infected bats thus far recorded anywhere.”

In 1931, Dr. H. Metivier, a Veterinary surgeon, established the connection between the bites of bats and paralytic rabies and Dr. Joseph Lennox Pawan of Trinidad in the West Indies, a Government Bacteriologist, found Negri bodies in the brain of a bat with unusual habits. In 1932, Dr. Pawan discovered that infected vampire bats could transmit rabies to humans and other animals. In 1934, the Trinidad and Tobago Government began a program of eradicating vampire bats, while encouraging the screening off of livestock buildings and offering free vaccination programs for exposed livestock.

After the opening of the Trinidad Regional Virus Laboratory in 1953, Arthur Greenhall demonstrated that at least eight species of bats in Trinidad had been infected with rabies; including the Common Vampire Bat, the rare White-winged Vampire Bat, as well as two abundant species of Fruit Bats: the Seba's Short-tailed Bat, and the Jamaican Fruit Bat.

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