If R 0 increases with host density in this system, different threshold levels of vaccination coverage would be necessary to eliminate disease in different density populations [12, 20] . However, our data on individual variation in biting behaviour also illustrate that it would be difficult to detect statistical differences in the range of R 0 values that we estimated ( Figure  S2 ). Thus in practice, when only a small number of epidemics are observed, individual variation in transmission may mask any underlying variation in R 0 driven by population density. So although we cannot decipher the relationship between population density and rabies transmission, the consistency of our individual-and population-level estimates from Tanzania and from a wide range of sites around the world allow us to estimate the threshold vaccination coverage necessary to eliminate the disease.