Can whales get rabies?

[F.Pu-du-he-pa-as]

Since rabies affects mammals, and whales are mammals, can whales get rabies? What happens? Are there any recorded cases of whales with rabies? I wonder how the hydrophobia thing works out, since whales live in the water…

[GIGObuster]

Not likely but since they are mammals they indeed can get it.

Can a Whale Get Rabies?

“It’s not as silly a question as you might think,” says Michael Moore, a marine-mammal research specialist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. “It would take some extraordinary circumstances, but any mammal can get rabies.”

Bats, coyotes, foxes and raccoons are the most common carriers of rabies but, being landlubbers, it’s highly improbable that any of them would have a chance to bite and infect a whale. One of those animals could, however, bite a seal that’s resting on a beach, and then that seal could swim off and bite a whale. Although there is absolutely no record of a rabid whale, and only one documented case of rabies in a seal—a ringed seal caught in 1980 in Svalbard, an archipelago off Norway—the scenario may soon be of greater concern. “Starting 10 years ago, coyotes began to prey on harp seals here on Cape Cod,” Moore says. “Because of that, I like for my staff to get vaccinated. There’s a very small chance that a seal will have rabies.”

Rabies travels along nerves at a rate of 0.3 to 0.8 inches a day, so if a 50-foot-long whale was bit in the tail, it might take two to five years for the virus to reach the animal’s brain and manifest.

Watch out, then, for zigzagging whales bumping into stuff. Another classic symptom of rabies infection is hydrophobia, which would be quite difficult for a whale to deal with. “Who knows?” Moore jokes. “Perhaps that’s why whales strand themselves on beaches.”

[Hail_Ants]

Maybe this was what was wrong with that crazy whalethat attacked a whaler off the coast of South America in the 1800s and was the basis for Melville’s Moby Dick…

[Senegoid]

I don’t think hydrophobia really means “fear of water”, when describing a symptom of rabies. Rather, the victim loses control of the throat muscles for swallowing, and thus gets frothy at the mouth (also a classic symptom of rabies), and this was called “hydrophobia”.

(In fact, as I recall it, hydrophobia was actually another name for the disease itself, a synonym for rabies.)

Whales would not actually get frothy at the mouth, since their mouths are constantly getting flushed with sea water. Unless, I suppose, they got lockjaw and couldn’t even open their mouth.

[bienville]

Working on a screenplay for a Free Willy / Old Yeller mash-up?

'Cause if not then I’m gonna.

[you_with_the_face]

@Senegoid

I don’t think hydrophobia really means “fear of water”, when describing a symptom of rabies. Rather, the victim loses control of the throat muscles for swallowing, and thus gets frothy at the mouth (also a classic symptom of rabies), and this was called “hydrophobia”.

Actually, it is true. A telling symptom of rabies is severe anxiety and gagging just at the sight of water. This reaction was displayed by this patient; just taking a shower was enough to provoke him.