This article talks about the main causes of rabies is mammals. It includes dogs, cats, rabbits, mongoose, and skunk. Concentration of rabies virus is more in saliva. Human saliva contains lysozyme and RNase. These are bactericidal compounds that are they can clean bacterial cell wall, but the virus thrives in this environment. This is because of the viral capsid proteins. These are extremely resistant to stress conditions. Rabies virus belongs to "rapdo viridie" family of genus lyssa virus. This is a retro virus that is it has RNA as the genetic material.

While there are various mammals that have the possibility to get infected by the rabies virus, dogs are the most common animals that have the high possibility of getting affected than the others. The virus starts reaching the central nervous systems from a time of 3 to 8 weeks in dogs and 2 to 6 weeks in a pet cat. Although the virus reaches the central nervous system, it needs to replicate in order to show out its wide spread attack in the animal's body. This period of time from its entry into the central system till the time effective symptoms start showing up is called as "incubating" time if the virus. The incubating time is usually 6 months in case of mammals, whereas it is a year or so in humans. The movement of the virus in the mammal's body is far faster than that in case of humans. In humans, the virus enters into the salivary gland only after 8 or 10 months of infection being left untreated, whereas in case of mammals like dogs, cats and skunks, they start the virus starts to appear in their saliva in substantial amount after 2 to 3 months of infection.

The phases in which the disease progress in mammals are categorized into three heads or phases. These are namely, the prodromal phase, the furious phase and the paralytic phase. The last phase of the disease is also called as the dumb phase. The prodromal phase is about 2 to 3 days after infection in dogs and 1 to 2 days in cats. During this initial phase of infection, they start to show up traits that were peculiar to them till now. A calm animal may turn out to be very furious or even a furious kind may shy away. Cats show more tensed and erratic behavioral traits that the dogs. They usually tend to bite their own owners or even lick them at the bite site quite often.

The second phase is the furious phase, in this phase they tend to become more hyperactive than their usual behavior. This phase is more predominantly seen in cats than in dogs. However in both the mammals they last for 1 to 7 days after getting infected. One of the most witnessed activities is that the pets try to attack their enclosures when they get caged. They tend to bite or roam around in lonely places of their normal household.

The third phase being the dumb phase, in this phase the animal mostly will become paralytic. They might experience nerve seizure that may eventually lead to death.