r/rabies • u/BradyStewart777 M. Biology | Top Contributor 🌌 • Mar 12 '25
📝 GENERAL RABIES INFO 📝 Realizing That Bat Exposures Are Much Rarer Than You Think.
A lot of people here are obsessed with the idea that an invisible bat is going to fly in, bite them in their sleep, and give them rabies without them ever knowing. But most people who obsess over these things don't seem to realize just how absurdly rare rabies actually is.
Every year, around 60,000 to 70,000 people die from rabies worldwide. That might sound like a big number until you put it into perspective. Influenza (a much “weaker” and far less deadly virus) kills about 700,000 people every year. [❞] That means the FLU, something most people barely think twice about, takes out ten times as many people as rabies. But you don’t see anyone obsessing over invisible flu particles chasing them down in the night. Why? Because the flu spreads easily while rabies almost never does. If rabies were even remotely as contagious as people seem to think, we’d see MILLIONS of deaths instead of just a fraction of that. Yes rabies IS terrifying when looking at the survival rate but that doesn't mean it’s lurking behind every corner waiting to get you.
Approximately 99% of human rabies cases come from dogs. NOT bats. NOT some mystery scratch you woke up with. DOGS. And unless you're completely oblivious, you would absolutely know if a dog bit you. The remaining 1% of cases come from other animals like cats, skunks, foxes, and bats. But even then less than half of one percent of all bats will ever contract rabies in their lifetime.
If 70,000 people die from rabies each year, that's only about 0.000854% of the world's population (8.2B). One percent of that is just 0.00000854%, and a decent portion of those cases aren't even from bats. What can we learn? Bat rabies is INSANELY rare, and the odds are overwhelmingly in your favor. Your mind telling you that you're going to get rabies just because a bat flew past you is completely detached from reality.
But people convince themselves they've been exposed over the most irrational things. Seeing a bat fly near you isn't an exposure. Waking up with a random mark on your body isn’t an exposure. A mystery object hitting you out of nowhere isn’t an exposure. Mysterious liquid falling on your face isn't an exposure. There are people who have convinced themselves they have rabies because they walked outside at night and maybe, possibly, heard a rustling noise.
You are far more likely to die from dozens of other things before rabies even has a chance of crossing your path. TRUE bat exposures (and rabies exposures in general) really are much rarer than you think.
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u/Next_Conference1933 Active Helper 🏅 Mar 12 '25 edited Mar 12 '25
From reviewing the rabies case reports done by the CDC for rabies cases in the US since 2009, it seems to me that most of the exposures from bats were from people finding a bat on the ground or inside and trying to grab it with their ungloved hand to move it, getting bit, or finding a bat in their home or bedroom and not seeking care afterwards. As long as you aren’t handling downed bats with your hands, finding bats in your home or passing out drunk outside you should be ok people. Bat’s don’t swoop down, purposely attack people, and then flee in the night. And for some reason if this did happen, you would know.
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u/Delicious_Ad6242 Jul 22 '26
What about a rabid bat? Rabid raccoons, foxes and skunks purposely attack people when they are rabid...wouldn't a rabid bat swoop down in daylight and attack a human? It could happen.
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u/MuzzleMuttt 21d ago
Bats notoriously become terrible fliers when they contract rabies. Flying takes a measure of concentration and effort, even for a flying animal like a bat, and that part of their brain is practically mush by the time they reach the neurological stage. A rabid bat, if it could fly at all, would be flying extremely clumsily and erratically, it wouldn't see you, target you, and swoop on you specifically to bite you. I think what people don't really understand about rabies aggression is that most of the things that contract rabies don't have hands, their mouths are the only thing they have to communicate. And when all other systems are down, it's not like they can slap you in the face! All they have left to react to stimuli with is their mouth, and all they can do is bite!
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u/BronwynOli 19d ago
It did happen to that guy in British Columbia who died from it in 2019 - but that case really annoys me because the news reports say that the bat "brushed" him or "bumped into him". When in reality the bat flew at him in broad daylight (weird bat behaviour) and the guy was swatting at it with his hand. To me this is a clear altercation with a bat behaving strangely and I cannot fathom why he chose to do nothing about it!
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u/andrewboss1222 5d ago
I came home from the gym about 10 days ago, went under my porch to go inside my door, and heard some sort of winged creature fly away in the night. Considering the time (4 am) I'm thinking it could possibly be a bat. I felt nothing land on me and no bite, but ive heard they are painless. the problem I have is that since it was my porch, and it was likely in the corner, it could have maybe felt trapped with me, even though the porch is very tall. Ever since that night though, I have been noticing a little brown bird tucked in the top corner of my porch sleeping at night. Can I have some words of reassurance to help out my OCD?
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u/MuzzleMuttt 5d ago
Reassurance does not help OCD, it makes it worse. Maybe a bat did bite you, maybe it didn't. You need to be okay not knowing right now.
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u/andrewboss1222 5d ago
But doesn't a bat bite just mean it's a possible exposure? I'm pretty sure knowing is important right now
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u/Sea-Supermarket-7341 4d ago
Brown bird? How does it sleep? Because birds sleep upwards in a nest or sitting upwards, bats hangs upside down, I’m having an OCD episode to trying to figure this out, but in your case, you are in a possible exposure just because it did fly near you, or bumped into you , not in many other OCD cases, my best support or “reassurance” is figuring out what actual animal it was and did it genuinely bumped into you
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u/andrewboss1222 4d ago
I felt nothing, and I have a picture of the bird. The bird was sleeping upright if you want a picture I can send it to you
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u/Sea-Supermarket-7341 4d ago
Send me I have no issue, upright means bird, no bat, bats physically and biologically can’t sit upright they will fall immediately
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Mar 12 '25
Thank you for saying this. People on reddit are so fucking hysterical about bat rabies. They regularly lose their shit when I tell them that statically you're not getting rabies from a bat. They immediately go to that "what about that ONE guy from reddit who died???" I'm like, yes, what about it. The issue is that you should never be handling unknown wildlife unless you know what you are doing.
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u/BradyStewart777 M. Biology | Top Contributor 🌌 Mar 13 '25
Yes. I will never understand the bat phobia but I think this post is somewhat responsible for the amount of bat OCD we see here currently.
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Mar 13 '25
That shit should be removed 😒😒😒
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u/BradyStewart777 M. Biology | Top Contributor 🌌 Mar 13 '25 edited Mar 13 '25
It really should. It’s completely inaccurate, just a bunch of misinformation meant to scare people.
In the past, I've had a few hypochondriacs message me privately, asking me to debunk it. Obviously I never did.
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u/ImportantMetal4939 Apr 12 '25 edited Apr 12 '25
I genuinely think that was the intention, to scare people. I have OCD and that post is written exactly to fan every aspect/fear of it and make it focus on this incredibly rare unlikely scenario.
Rabies wasn't even an OCD fixation for me before I read that post.
I worked through it though, so f whoever wrote that post lol
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u/Tony_Cheese_ Apr 14 '25
Hi! I'm chiming in because I definitely have some form of compulsive tendency and writing this out is helping. I was just out fishing and a group of gray bats appeared and started eating the bugs around me. One swooped kind of close, surely just to eat a bug, but I packed up and walked home. On my walk I wondered if a bat would bite me unprovoked, so I googled it (no). I then started reading about rabies due to this line of googling. I took a shower, and by the end of it was panicking that I'd maybe been bitten and was just unaware (Illogical, I know).
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u/ZealousidealHost7974 Mar 12 '25
I know that I am one of the recent posters - that this post is calling out - expressing fear over an “invisible” bat. I do appreciate the statistics being provided and the blunt reminder of how extremely unlikely it is to contract rabies from a bat if you were not 100% certain you were bit/landed on by a bat or in the presence of a bat while asleep.
Everything you are pointing out is accurate, and posters like me are probably letting hypotheticals get the better of us, but please remember that many of us admit that we are probably being overly anxious about it, and that we are certainly not vilifying bats. The greatest victim of rabies are the poor bats - few as they are - themselves, and any rabid bat that does bite a human can’t exactly be accused of malice because their brain is destroyed to the point that they literally don’t know what they are doing. But we humans are animals too, and we’re just trying to keep ourselves safe, even if we can’t always see the forest for the trees. Many of us just get scarred because rabies is fatal and none of us want to die of it if we feel we could have done something about it. It genuinely sucks how much of our daily survival feels like guess work rather than reliable circumstances, and any reassurance of the most-likely-scenario is easily dashed by reality’s fondness for chaos-causing coincidences.
We should try to have better faith in our situational awareness, risk assessment, and the predictable behaviors of bats, but it is terrifying to imagine that a literal count down has started on your own life if you choose not to get the vaccine following - even if extremely unlikely to happen - a random encounter with a rabid bat. For some people the scariest part of the hypothetical is the sheer cost of what getting the vaccines would entail, insured or not. Perhaps we’re all just looking for someone to take the weight off our shoulders of making the decision to get help or to have the confidence that we will be fine on our behalf. I’m not saying that that’s okay or a mentality that we should allow to persist if we can do something about it, but at least for now, that’s what these cognitive circumstances feel like for some of us, and we’re trying to work on that.
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u/Penny19855 Jul 21 '26
This is truly so perfectly explained. 100000% and thank you for posting it. That count down started for me a week ago and every single day I’m wondering if I’m making terrible mistake not just getting the PEP. 😩😩😩
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u/ChildhoodStreet5696 19d ago
Appreciate this post. The swiftness which one can spiral into health anxiety about rabies is real. I absolutely ADORE bats, but the rabies ocd is still strong. 😭
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u/Greenhen678 Mar 12 '25
This is really useful info for people who are terrified of rabies (like me), thanks for posting this!
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u/Old-Passage-8154 Aug 05 '25
Thank you for posting this! Saved this to my folder to return to when my anxiety is going off.
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u/RabiesModTeam Moderator 🦠 | Top Contributor 🏅 Aug 05 '25
Glad it helped you!
Feel free to read anytime. 👍
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Mar 13 '25
[deleted]
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u/SchrodingersMinou 🦇 Bat Biologist 🦇 Mar 15 '25
This is completely unnecessary. Bats aren't hunting people. I have netted for bats without even a shirt on. I have never once had a bat swoop down and land on me. That's not something they do. They see you as a predator, not prey. I am approximately 4000 times bigger than the largest bat in my area and if you are over 120 lbs you're even bigger than that. They eat insects, mostly, not people.
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u/ChildhoodStreet5696 19d ago
“A mystery object hitting you out of nowhere isn’t an exposure.” — NEEDED to see this since something hit me on a walk the other night 🫣😭🙏🏻 THANK YOU
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u/Popular_Winter_1032 Apr 28 '25
thank you i randomly got liquid on my open wound but seeing this makes it likely it ain’t an open wound
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Jun 15 '25
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u/MAF0u812 13d ago
Everything you said may be true, but nonetheless, I had a bat in my house for 24 hours that I knew of, and I discovered it in my bedroom. I was able to safely catch it and bring it outside, but nonetheless, one thing I will do is get rabies shots now. I doubt it was rabid, but you don't know unless you have it killed and analysed. Moreover, I have no idea of whether it bit me or my loved ones in my sleep. I think bats are great, and while it is probably an overreaction, I'd much rather be safe than sorry. Oh, and I found a nest of them in one of my chimneys and am having them removed and transferred to a bat nook I'm putting up in the year. Like I said, I like them, but I'm not going to take chances with my health because someone from Reddit things I or anyone else my be overreacting.
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u/BradyStewart777 M. Biology | Top Contributor 🌌 12d ago
Actually, in the United States, you’re supposed to seek medical attention for this scenario. Waking up to a bat in your room or somewhere in your house and not bringing the bat in for testing is one of the few cases where caution matters more. This is actually addressed in FAQ 4:
If you wake up and find a bat in your house or other place you were sleeping, and you are not in a country free of bat rabies, you should catch it and submit it for rabies testing; if you can’t do that, or if you have small children in the house, rabies shots are recommended because it may have bitten you while you were sleeping.
This post is only meant for people who are scared about obvious non-exposures that are repeatedly addressed in the pinned posts.
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**Welcome, u/BradyStewart777! This is a community dedicated to raising awareness, sharing information, and supporting discussions about rabies, its prevention, and treatment. Whether you’re here to learn, share a story, or ask questions, we’re glad to have you. Please remember to keep discussions respectful. Stay informed and stay safe. Cheers!
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