The National Institute of Health of Colombia has reported a considerable number of cases of sylvatic rabies transmitted by bats since 2000.
The virus is classified in Latin countries as urban rabies and sylvatic rabies that are transmitted by domestic animals and bats respectively (Figure 1).
We report on a sylvatic rabies virus variant detected in a golden palm civet in Sri Lanka.
Several rabies virus variants associated with wildlife are known in the Americas and Africa (1,13-15), and this report identified classical sylvatic rabies in Asia.
An investigation in Chile found that nonvampire bats may in fact serve as adequate vectors of
sylvatic rabies and even confirmed a single human infection of nonvampire-bat variant rabies linked to a nonhematophagous bat (6,7).
