How is rabies cool? Beyond the obvious I mean (yeah yeah, closest thing to an irl zombie apocalypse, no known cure, vaccine behavior I've never heard of anywhere else etc.) Do we have an idea of its history, how it developed?
2 options:
1) rabies (Lyssa) was born when the blood from the castrated balls of Uranus fell into the night (Nyx)
2) Rhabdoviruses (family Rhabdoviridae) are RNA viruses that infect a diverse selection of hosts, including vertebrates, invertebrates, and even plants. Phylogenomic analyses show that the earliest rhabdoviruses originated in arthropods (Li et al., 2015). These early arthropod viruses likely served as precursors to vertebrate-infecting genera, including Lyssavirus. Genome sequencing of over 70 arthropod taxa revealed hundreds of novel viral clades basal to all known vertebrate mononegavirales, suggesting that rhabdoviruses like Lyssaviruses emerged through long-term coevolution and horizontal transmission between arthropods and early vertebrates (Li et al., 2015).
While there is much debate about exactly when and where lyssaviruses originally emerged, it is generally believed that bats are the principle reservoirs for most described lyssaviruses and likely served as the âevolutionary wellspringâ for the genus (Rupprecht et al., 2017). One hypothesis on the evolution of lyssaviruses proposes that ancestral bats carried an early lyssavirus into South America during intercontinental dispersal from Africa. There, the virus became endemic in diverse bat taxa and later spilled into carnivores, evolving into what we know today as RABV (Rupprecht et al., 2017). Fossil and molecular evidence places early bats in Gondwana, where the most recent common ancestor of the modern bats likely existed 80 million years ago. This ancient chiropteran origin may explain the divergence between the American indigenous RABV and Old World species of lyssaviruses (Teeling et al., 2005; Rupprecht et al., 2017).
Alternatively, another hypothesis dates the most recent common ancestor of the extant New World bat lineages of lyssaviruses to the mid to late 1600s using the molecular clock analysis (Holmes & Harvey, 2023; Streiker et al., 2016). This period coincided with European livestock introduction and the expansion of vampire bat populations, creating new ecological opportunities for viral spreads and host shifts (Rupprecht et al., 2011).
If anypony is interested in the full paper I wrote on the origin of rabies and lyssaviruses, here you go! https://docs.google.com/document/d/1o127fYY3WlvagZU8asA_j56KMWJTbh4oNs9yP8nEEYs/edit?usp=drivesdk
It was from my evolutionary biology class last year. I think my professor was a little confused on why I chose to do this instead of⌠you knowâŚwrite something about my actual research focus (pygmy raccoons.) But I just think rabies is cool
Nessie OâNeil 09/28/2025 The Evolution of Lyssaviruses Well documented across antiquity, rabies is historically one of the most feared zoon
