Rabies and sharks

Marian Perera · Feb 21, 2014

Hi everyone,

This is an idea I'm toying with - basically, a shark being deliberately infected with rabies. In the series I'm working on at the moment, sharks are trained by an organization to act as scouts for ships, and I was thinking of someone infiltrating the organization to turn the sharks against them.

I've read that rabies is a primarily a disease of warm-blooded animals, but in scientific experiments, the virus has been adapted to grow in the cells of poikilothermic vertebrates as well. For the purposes of the story (which is fantasy), I can go with this being a special mutant strain.

My question is about the symptoms. The unpredictable, aggressive behavior is perfect. The paralysis of the throat muscles, maybe not. How would this affect a shark? If the answer is, the shark would probably drown, then obviously I need to reconsider.

Thanks for your input.

Mr Flibble · Feb 21, 2014

I think the hydrophobia that often develops could be used to great effect here. A shark who's afraid of water? Hehehe

I think (could be wrong) that the hydrophobia goes with the furious rabies, and the paralysis more with the dumb rabies (which isn't as common). So the aggression/hydrophobia wouldn't be present at the same time as paralysis (maybe when it becomes more advanced).

Ah, this link gives a bit of info - the hydrophobia includes brief muscle spasms in the throat. So not paralysis exactly. (Paralysis occurs at end stage in animals it notes) You could go with that? Still, I think the fear of water would send them even doolally-er. Perhaps resulting in more aggression?

Steve Collins · Feb 21, 2014

Do they have to be sharks? Dolphins are warm blooded and I guess would be better suited to being a rabies carrier. Also they are trained far more easily than sharks. For example they have been trained by many countries to carry explosives etc. Just a thought.

Marian Perera · Feb 21, 2014

Steve Collins said:
Do they have to be sharks? Dolphins are warm blooded and I guess would be better suited to being a rabies carrier. Also they are trained far more easily than sharks. For example they have been trained by many countries to carry explosives etc. Just a thought.

Well, the first two in the series, featuring a great white and a tiger shark, have been sold and can't be rewritten with dolphins.

Also, I really didn't want to go the Flipper or Free Willy route. I wanted something which (to the best of my knowledge) hasn't been done before. And to me, there would have been no fun or challenge in writing about a dolphin. It was a whole lot more of a rush to write a great white shark that behaved like a shark, but which was still a sympathetic character.

Since it's a fantasy, the sharks have mental/empathic bonds to certain people, which is how they're trained.

Marian Perera · Feb 21, 2014

Mr Flibble said:
I think the hydrophobia that often develops could be used to great effect here. A shark who's afraid of water?

Oh wow. I can just imagine.

Thanks for the link. Irritability, anxiety and fatigue are all good - obvious signs that something's not quite right, but not pointing to rabies or turning the shark into a frothing-at-the-mouth horror right away.

Then we get into advanced rabies, where the shark is aggressive, hallucinates, has photophobia, has a sustained erection... OK, maybe not the last one. Though I really didn't know that happened to men with the disease.

Ah, this link gives a bit of info - the hydrophobia includes brief muscle spasms in the throat.

Maybe this will work, then. The shark won't feel painful muscle spasms each time it breathes, just each time it swallows.

I've read that sharks breathe by water entering their mouths, which is why they suffocate if they stop swimming. Some species can also pull in water through movements of their cheek muscles, and some can switch between both mechanisms, but the great white isn't one of them. It has to "just keep swimming", to quote Finding Nemo.

Does anyone know which mechanism the tiger shark uses? I'm just worried that a rabid adult great white might be a bit much for anyone to handle, though I could always make it a juvenile instead.

robjvargas · Feb 21, 2014

NOTE: The Centers for Disease Control say all mammals are susceptible to rabies. And *only* mammals.

Being a fantasy, it could mutate, I suppose. But the rabies that we know won't infect a shark.

Mr Flibble · Feb 21, 2014

Right

Two sorts of breathing in sharks -- buccal pumping (they can pump water over their gills independent of movement) or ram ventilation (movement rams water over the gills)

Only a few sharks are obligate ram ventilators (they have to keep swimming) and I don't think the tiger is one of them, though the great white is.

This link says tiger sharks can swap between the two depending on how fast they are moving. So they don't have to keep swimming, where a great white does

Albedo · Feb 21, 2014

Rabies is transmitted through saliva. Sharks don't secrete saliva to my knowledge. They do have certain glands for excreting salt, but those are in the rectum. Maybe not very good vectors for the rabies virus.

According to this review, hydrophobia only occurs in humans, but I've seen other sources say otherwise. The mechanism of hydrophobia isn't really known, and the pharyngeal musculature of sharks is very different from mammalian musculature. You could explain it away fairly easily.

Mr Flibble · Feb 21, 2014

I reckon it's only that it's hard to know if a dog is afraid of water because it can't exactly say, and it's not like most of them will willingly jump into a bath in any case....

I think you could probably make a case for it. Especially in fantasy (or if you had a disease that gave similar symptoms, but wasn't explicitly called rabies)

Marian Perera · Feb 21, 2014

Albedo said:
Rabies is transmitted through saliva. Sharks don't secrete saliva to my knowledge. They do have certain glands for excreting salt, but those are in the rectum. Maybe not very good vectors for the rabies virus.

Thanks! A rabid shark would make for some terrific action scenes and chases through training pools, but I don't want it to infect every other (healthy, normal) shark with a bite. Partly because there would be no treatment and they'd all have to be killed before they could manifest symptoms.

Helix · Feb 21, 2014

Mr Flibble said:
This link says tiger sharks can swap between the two depending on how fast they are moving. So they don't have to keep swimming, where a great white does

I was having a look too because it was an interesting question! That link refers to a tiger shark but all the other pages that offer the same info say that a sand tiger shark is the one that can switch between modes. A sand tiger shark a.k.a grey nurse shark is not even in the same family as yer actual tiger shark. *shakes fist at common names*

Marian Perera · Feb 21, 2014

Mr Flibble said:
Especially in fantasy (or if you had a disease that gave similar symptoms, but wasn't explicitly called rabies)

I'll have to think about this.

I was originally going to call it rabies because the name has a visceral effect on me, but there are other options. "Hydrophobia" wouldn't work, but the word "rabies" means madness.

*ponders*

Would it be detrimental if I called the disease rabies?

Albedo · Feb 21, 2014

Love this thread.

I'm gunna have circles under my eyes tomorrow and people will ask me if I had a big night last night and I'll answer 'yes, I was up all night discussing shark rabies' and they will give me That Look again.

QoS: maybe 'shark Lyssavirus?' That's what we in Oz call our own homegrown rabies virus: 'bat Lyssavirus'. Very politically correct.

Helix · Feb 21, 2014

Same here, Albedo!

And I was going to say something very silly along the lines of 'but you can always be vaccinated against rabies', but luckily it occurred to me just in time that if you were attacked by a tiger shark the last thing you'd be worrying about is an infection. Phew! I'm glad I didn't post that comment.

Oh...

Mr Flibble · Feb 21, 2014

Helix said:
I was having a look too because it was an interesting question! That link refers to a tiger shark but all the other pages that offer the same info say that a sand tiger shark is the one that can switch between modes. A sand tiger shark a.k.a grey nurse shark is not even in the same family as yer actual tiger shark. *shakes fist at common names*

Yeah I couldn't find much info on which sharks use which method -- that was the only one that mentioned "tiger" sharks (I did find one minor ref to tiger sharks having been found "sleeping" in caves off of Mexico, so obviously not obligates)

However, I discovered even if they don't name them, most sharks apparently don't need to keep moving (only a dozen species or so?)

Infuriatingly there doesn't seem to be any kind of list telling you which is which!

I'm gunna have circles under my eyes tomorrow and people will ask me if I had a big night last night and I'll answer 'yes, I was up all night discussing shark rabies' and they will give me That Look again.

Lunchtime here, but I know what you mean!

ETA: Found this re "sleeping sharks" in the caves:

To date, at least four and possibly five species of whaler shark are known to enter the caves at Isla Mujeres: the Caribbean Reef, Tiger (Galeocerdo cuvier), Lemon (Negaprion brevirostris), Blue (Prionace glauca), and probably the Bull (Carcharhinus leucas).

Albedo · Feb 21, 2014

And I just found out that lyssaviruses are named after Lyssa, Greek goddess of madness, rage and frenzy. Awesome.

Helix · Feb 21, 2014

Mr Flibble said:
Yeah I couldn't find much info on which sharks use which method -- that was the only one that mentioned "tiger" sharks (I did find one minor ref to tiger sharks having been found "sleeping" in caves off of Mexico, so obviously not obligates)

Cool! Somehow the idea of slumbering tiger sharks is even more intimidating...

Mr Flibble · Feb 21, 2014

In the link I found about it, that particular cave's water is very oxygen rich and may have a narcotic effect on the sharks

So, high, sleeping sharks.

Marian Perera · Feb 21, 2014

Helix said:
Cool! Somehow the idea of slumbering tiger sharks is even more intimidating...

I read somewhere (Peter Benchley's Shark Trouble, maybe?) that a scuba diver once saw a grey nurse shark sleeping quietly in a cave.

So he decided to pull its tail, for some reason. It's a nurse shark, right? Not one of the dangerous species.

He pulled, the shark woke up in a panic, twisted around and swam out so fast that it bumped into him and knocked his regulator out. The genius was lucky nothing worse happened.

Marian Perera · Feb 21, 2014

Mr Flibble said:
In the link I found about it, that particular cave's water is very oxygen rich and may have a narcotic effect on the sharks

So, high, sleeping sharks.

Oh, this is a great detail.

I know sharks don't take well to captivity and small tanks, so I knew I'd have to address that when writing about training pools, especially the kind where the sharks would be held for long periods of time. I was thinking some kind of mild drug being added to the water.

Marian Perera · Feb 21, 2014

Albedo said:
And I just found out that lyssaviruses are named after Lyssa, Greek goddess of madness, rage and frenzy. Awesome.

I couldn't use "Lyssavirus" because the technology level of the world is Age of Steam (so they don't know about viruses), but now I want the word "Lyssa" to make an appearance somewhere. Even if it's just the name of the person who deliberately infects the shark.

Helix · Feb 21, 2014

From Mr Flibble's great link:

Divers report that the eyes of these sharks follow them intently as they move about inside the cave...

Dear heaven. I am not going to sleep tonight and I'm 740m above sea level.

QoS, I don't think I'd even do that to a dogfish! This completely irrelevant story about a small wobbegong still makes me smile.

Albedo · Feb 21, 2014

Woebegone wobbegong won't be gone.

Marian Perera · Feb 21, 2014

Helix said:
Dear heaven. I am not going to sleep tonight and I'm 740m above sea level.

That was a great link.

I'm going to have one training pool with these built-in caves, partly so that sharks who are injured can be examined (by people) while they lie motionless, enjoying the water. And yeah, the detail about their eyes.

QoS, I don't think I'd even do that to a dogfish! This completely irrelevant story about a small wobbegong still makes me smile.

No, I wouldn't deliberately mess with any creature in the water either. If I want to play with fish, I'll get a betta or a pearl gourami or something.

Funny story about the wobbegong. Can't believe it didn't let go even when it couldn't breathe any longer. At least the guy gave it a nice funeral.

jclarkdawe · Feb 21, 2014

I think you might have a problem with the mechanics of the bite. Sharks bite in water, and that water tends to flush the wound out. Rabies is from mammals on land, and the saliva stays in the wound.

Further, mammals have incisors, whereas I think the teeth for a shark are roughly uniform in size. You want an uneven bite that doesn't lend itself to being cleaned.

Although infection can set in with shark bites, it seems to me it is a lot less frequent then with bites on land.

On the flip side, how many people would know that rabies is a disease of warm blooded animals and how bites work?

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

Rabies and sharks

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Alex

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Alex

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They've been very bad, Mr Flibble

Alex

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They've been very bad, Mr Flibble

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Alex

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Feeling lucky, Query?