Carrying the rabies virus on your body generally results in illness, depending on how long the incubation period is. The rabies virus generally cannot survive independently in the environment; it is a neuroleptic anaerobic virus that lives primarily in body fluids and nervous tissue, is weakly resistant, and is easily killed by sunlight, heat, drying, and general disinfectants. It can only survive by entering the body through the saliva of a poisonous animal contaminating the wound of a bitten animal or a human being. In the body first enter the peripheral nerves, along the nerve fibers of slow, reverse transit to the central nervous system. The time the virus spends in reverse transit within the nerves is the incubation period. In humans, the incubation period is about 30% within 30 days, 54% between 31-90 days, 15% more than 90 days, and about 1% more than 1 year. The incubation period in dogs is usually 3-8 weeks. Because of the wide variation in the speed and distance of this reverse transit of the virus within the nerves, there is a wide variation in the incubation period of rabies. The time of virus transit to the CNS is correlated with age, wound site, depth of wound, amount of invading virus, and virulence. When the virus is transported into the CNS, the rate of transport increases steeply, and only after being transported into the brain does it replicate and multiply in large numbers and develop the disease. If you are scratched or bitten by an animal such as a dog or cat, it is recommended that you immediately clear the wound and then go to the CDC as soon as possible to receive rabies vaccination, and do not take any chances.