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Los Angeles Wildlife Education: Do Rats Carry Rabies?

Wild rats can carry several parasites and diseases. Discerning which diseases they carry depends on the type of rat and where it lives.



Dry Bite
Rats are thought to have a “dry bite” and therefore be unable to transmit rabies because rabies is transmitted via the saliva. Because rats’ incisor teeth are placed forward in the mouth, some think that they can’t get coated with saliva. This is a misconception. Rats do transmit rat bite fever, which is transmitted through the saliva, proving that their teeth do get saliva on them. A true “dry bite” is one where a person is bitten by a venomous creature, such as a spider or a rattlesnake, but the creature doesn’t eject any venom into its victim.

Rabies
It isn’t that a rat can’t transmit the rabies virus because of lack of saliva on the teeth, it is just very rare for a rat to carry rabies. There has never been a documented case of rabies in the United States that was transmitted through a rat to a human. There have been a very few documented cases of rat-transmitted rabies in other countries of the world. Out of 7,000 people in Thailand who contracted rabies between the years of 1990–1994, only one percent were caused by rats. During that same time period, four cases of rat-transmitted rabies were found out of 9,998 cases in Poland. Israel reported one case, while among Surinam’s children, there was an outbreak of paralytic rabies.

Why Do Rats Rarely Have Rabies?
Rats rarely are found to have rabies because of the fact that they rarely survive an attack by a rabid animal long enough to transmit the disease. They are small rodents and easily succumb to the rabies virus, or to the attack itself, before they have time to pass it on to another animal or human. Raccoons are the primary carriers of rabies, with skunks following, then bats, foxes, cats, and dogs, in that order. When a rat is attacked by one of these rabid animals, it is usually injured badly enough that it doesn’t survive very long.

Rabid Rats in the US
According to one study done, between the years of 1953 to 1970, only thirty-nine rats were found in the US to have rabies. Over that period of time, the number of rabid rats found during three-year segments decreased with time, until between 1968-1970 only two rabid rats were found.

Previous Education Articles
Will repellents get a Los Angeles groundhog out of the shed or porch? What will?
Will a high pitched sound deterrent machine repel wild Los Angeles animals?
Why do Los Angeles opossums play dead?
How to remove Los Angeles skunk odor from dog, car, human, house?