Rabies in humans comes from bats most of the time, not dogs

When you think about rabies, you might consider dogs or raccoons to be the first ones to pass the viral disease, but according to a new report, you’re more likely to get it from bats. Rabies is a deadly virus that, up until 1960, had been spread mainly through domesticated animals like dogs. Once they began getting vaccinated for the disease, however, wild animals became the main rabies hosts, causing about one to three human deaths each year in the United States — a drop from over 100 deaths a year in the early 1900s, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).