Stage 2 . Aggression, hide in corners, incoordination, disorientation, hyperaesthesia, seizures, increased salivation, pica, photophobia. Lasts up to 1 week. Lasts 2-4 days. Similar to cats and dogs.
Hydrophobia is due to painful pharyngeal spasms when attempting to drink fluids.
Less common mechanisms of transmission have included aerosol spread by inhalation in bat-colonised caves, and transplacental infection in skunks, bats and cattle. The head or carefully removed brain of the suspect animal should be cooled and chilled with wet ice during immediate transportation to an approved laboratory. The brain should not be frozen. At postmortem immunofluorescence tests are used to identify viral antigen - and this technique does not require live particles to be present. Other findings are the presence of intracellular inclusion bodies in large neurones of the brain - called negri bodies on histological examination of brain tissue.