This always puzzled me. Why don’t humans act much more aggressive or crazed like its often depicted with animals. Afaik there’s 2 types of rabies, “dumb” and “furious” so my question is more towards the 2nd type. For example, we never hear of rabies causing a human to accidentally bite another human so why is that?
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“Some” humans have highly developed prefrontal cortex 🙃
From what I’ve heard, humans just aren’t terribly bitey. Seeing videos of kids with rabies is terribly sad, but does give some insight into it. More fear than anything else.
It’s a terrible disease and a terrible way to die. If you get bitten or scratched by an animal, or even if you wake up to a bat in your house, you should immediately get the rabies vaccine, as even a microscratch from a bat can give you rabies. As far as diseases go, I’d say it’s probably up there with ebola in terms of suffering. At least ebola kills you quickly even as your insides melt.
So is there another animal that doesn’t bite when infected with rabies?
Bats actually. They seem to be carriers of the disease but don’t seem to be affected by it themselves, but they might still scratch you or bite you through normal behavior.
Although fortunately not a lot because they’re not particularly aggressive. Mostly they just ignore humans as they tend to be out of reach and we’re far too slow to be able to really do anything to them.
Fair. To rephrase, is there another animal that’s not made bitey by being ill with rabies.
Humans?
Har har.
I don’t know the specifics, but the relationship between bats and viruses are different than other mammals.
Their bodies and immune systems are really strange. They can get loaded up with tons of diseases but can still manage to outstrip the disease due to their metabolism and immune system. They act as pools of disease. But also are excellent pollinators and eat mosquitoes and other bugs that must be kept in check.
The worst things we can do are build new housing developments in freshly clear cut forests. Diseases that have always been in the bat population suddenly go from 50 miles in the remote woods to someone’s backyard table. A bat has taken a fruit-laced dump on it. Your big dog eats it, and then licks your SO’s hands 20 minutes later. She rubs her eye with the feces-laden saliva, and suddenly, a novel pathogen erupts.
I remember being in college (pre-covid) a biotechnology professor telling us about how zoonotic spillover events happen. He was studying ebola and how it would occasionally kill everyone (or many) in a remote village who came into contact with bats or other creatures often. It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up, as he basically said it was a matter of time till something like it happened again, but way, way worse. Fast forward a number of years and 1,000,000+ dead Americans later, and we now know that we got off extremely easy.
Uneducated Opinion: Because our higher brain functions can surpress fight/flight better than most animals. It’s the same reason jumpscare movies generally don’t turn theaters into a real-life bloodbath.
By the time rabies has gotten far enough to override that, the nervous system is basically gone and we’re dead.
I think this explains it right here. As another commenter said “more fear than anything else”. Animals act very differently than humans when they are scared, they often get very aggressive. Anecdotally, when I was younger my loving smush of a dog got hit by a car and I ran over to her and she bit the shit out of me. She was scared for her life, and that’s just how her brain was wired to react.
And just so I don’t leave anybody feeling awful, she made it to the vet, needed a pin in her hip, and her tail was amputated, but she went on to live to the ripe old age of 15. My bites weren’t too bad because she was a small dog. No stitches needed, but I have some tiny scars left if you look really close
But if you want to feel angry about the situation, it was a cop car that she was hit by which was flying down a residential street, and the cop yelled at me and my mother and threatened to give us a ticket for having a dog off the leash. And thus my hatred for police began at the age of 10.
That was a rollercoaster of emotions
ACAB
1312
It seems like a simple explanation, but the history of biology is pretty much the history of thinking we we’re special and then finding out we were wrong, over and over again.
Ah the “insects don’t feel pain” era. Nowadays we know that bugs can recognize human faces. Nobody knows why, they just can.
I think it’s because humans don’t fight much with their mouths. We mostly fight with our arms and more rarely bite and rabies just promotes hyper aggressiveness, of which, these symptoms are exhibited in infected humans.
If restrained instead of sedated a human does get very aggressive, flailing their arms, screaming and hurling insults, even at loved ones and family members. I think given the opportunity there would be some biting, but less often than animals, because again, humans primarily use their arms for violence.
Humans rarely bite as a defensive option. Animals bite when they are scared, humans tend to throw punches.
Rabies doesn’t make you bite, it makes you scared, confused and uncomfortable and aggressive, so you fight.
Humans rarely bite as a defensive option.
Tell that to fucking Kyle from Mrs. Ventura’s second grade class.
Oh hey you also got bit by a kid in 2nd grade? I punched the kid that did it to me. Walk in the next day and get sent to the principals office. When I told them why I did it they tried looking for teeth marks to prove it. A solid 16 hours later.
Damn bureaucrats
Kyle. Humans rarely bite as a defensive option. Next time do the patriotic American thing and shoot your fellow elementary school students.
See also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preparedness_101%3A_Zombie_Apocalypse
And:
… the generation of a “Zombie virus” cannot be firmly excluded according to the currently available biological evidence … In keeping with this conjecture, an interesting simulation of an imaginary Zombie outbreak reveals that most of the US population would turn into Zombies within one week from appearance of the first case … the transformation of Rabies virus into a “Zombie virus” will always remain a tangible threat surrounding human future
