Many people have been sucessfully treated to prevent the virus from destroying the person's nervous system. Therefore, in this disease prevention is key to avoiding rabies infections and disease. Rabies can infect almost all mammals. The virus also attacks their nerve cells causing them to act in very unusually and aggressive ways. Domesticated cats, dogs, cattle, horses, mules, sheep, goats, pigs, and ferrets can all get rabies and give it to humans.
Wild animals including skunks, bats, and racoons can also get rabies and give it to humans.
Human rabies is very rare. About 50,000 human rabies cases are reported each year in the world. Only 30 human rabies cases have been reported in the United States since 1990. There are a number of reasons human rabies is so rare. In the late 1880's Louis Pasteur developed a vaccine that was used in the treatment of people attacked by rabid animals.