The average incubation period, which varies greatly, is 3-8 weeks for most species. The animal is irritable and will snap and bite at real or imaginary objects. It may run for miles and attack anything in its path. The animal is extremely vicious and violent. Paralysis sets in shortly, usually affecting the hind legs first.
Death follows four to seven days after the onset of clinical signs.
In dumb rabies, the prominent symptoms are drowsiness and paralysis of the lower jaw. The animal may appear to have a bone lodged in its throat, sometimes causing owners to force open an animal's mouth to investigate and become unwittingly exposed to rabies. Animals with dumb rabies have no tendency to roam but will snap at movement. They are completely insensitive to pain, and usually become comatose and die from three to ten days after first symptoms appear. Although rabies has plagued both man and animals from the dawn of recorded history, it was not until 1884 that Louis Pasteur, the great French bacteriologist, first announced his discovery of an anti-rabies vaccine.