Rabies

Hamster with Rabies

Rabies is a viral disease that effects the central nervous system and can cause inflammation of the brain in any warm blooded animals, including hamsters.

Signs and Symptoms

The early stages of rabies in a hamster include a change in its personality which begins with a dull demeanor and then turning to excitable and ending in aggression. In the late stages of hamster rabies includes convulsion and death. If you use good hamster care methods, you will have closely observed your hamster’s behavior and know when something has changed for the worse

Causes

The rabies virus is carried in the saliva of an infected hamster and can be spread or transmitted to a healthy hamster through a bite. If a hamster is bitten by a larger animal with rabies, it is unlikely that a hamster would survive the bite in the first place. So hamster rabies is pretty rare. In the UK, hamsters that are shipped from countries that have rabies a required to be quarantined for six month making it even less likely your aggressive hamster has rabies and more likely it has some other hamster illness. The US does not have such a laws but through good vaccination programs, cases of rabies are rare.

Treatment

There is no treatment for the rabies virus in hamster. Hamsters with rabies will eventually die. Humans can be treated during the early stages by receiving doses of the rabies vaccine.

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4 thoughts on “Rabies”

  1. Two days ago my hamster was fine. Today when i got home from work the hamster has something swollen and blind with one eye.

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