Where do animals get infected with rabies to start with?

Question

now, someone else already tried to ask this, but it seems as if no one really read the question. How does a non infected animal get rabies? without getting bitten or scratched or anything else. everything has to start somewhere, where did this start and what causes the infection to get into the saliva and where does the infection generate from?

Answer 1

Rabies is a virus, so the method of infection is similar ot most any virus. Transmission of the rabies virus within an animal population has been the subject of a lot of research.  The infective agents are saliva, urine, blood, aerosols of these three fluids, and mothers passing on the virus to their young in the fetal stage.  Activities such as grooming, nursing, having s*x, eating the same food, fighting, and coming into contact with urine from an infected animal can spread the virus.  For example, in raccoons and skunks, the virus is easily transmitted when saliva is exchanged between an infected and uninfected animal when they share the same food.

If you are asking where the rabies virus came from to begin with, you will get a Nobel prize if you come up with the answer.  

Answer 2

Rabies is an ancient disease, it's been writings of the egyptians darting back to the 23ooBC. In the 1939 was the worst case of rabies ever, killing 675 dogs and 4 humans. In New Jersey.In 1942 there was a mass vaccination done to stop this out break in dogs all pets and strays.Last case was in 1956 in dogs and in bats in 1960, bats carry this disease and have to bite some one or an animal soon since this will kill the bat in a few days and for how this got started no one knows all we can say is its still around but more so in skunks, raccoons, fox. The only way i figure they get it is from a bite from something or same kind in a fight, or have eatten something that died from this disease.  

Answer 3

some animal a long time ago was probably born with it as a defect or something then it got past down when it bit animals and what not but I'm not really sure  

Answer 4

Why don't you look at my source?  It tells all about animals and rabies.  

Answer 5

IDK

Answer 6

Had to start somewhere, with a BITE OR A SCRATCH maybe.

Answer 7

The most common way is being bitten by an animal infected with the virus.

Rabies is spread when broken skin or mucous membranes comes into contact with infected matter (saliva or nerve tissue) from a rabid animal (i.e., scratches, touching drool or brain material).

Once the rabies virus has entered an animal's body, it can follow the nervous system and eventually reach the brain, causing an infection. The virus then travels to the salivary glands and is shed in the saliva of the infected animal.

Rabies can then be spread to other animals and people. The time between contact with the rabies virus (an exposure) and when visible signs of illness first appear (rabies infection in the brain) varies from a few days to several months.

So in conclusion, other animals.  No one really knows how the first animal picked up the infection.  It's kind of like the new flu strand every winter, why would their be a new one every year?

This can relate to AIDS and humans, one human caught it (from... well for those of you that know, lol), then it kept spreading, not from the source, but from human to human, or in this case, animal to animal.