RACCOONS and bats are probably the most common carriers, bats because rabies probably originated in bats as they found rabies like viruses in other species of bats. also cornavirurses, filoviruses. the 2nd most animal to carry lethal viruses, is wild rodents: hantaviruses, and pox origins.
As I was weirdly obsessed with rabies a few years ago I have a fun fact This really happened and it was quite effective
Anther method of the leave random rabies vaccine traps resulted in one to many hunters getting an unwanted vaccine.
I would think yes as any animal that scavenges would have a higher rabies infection chance. Wasn't absolutely sure so I found some sources.
https://www.treehugger.com/which-wild-animals-carry-rabies-which-ones-arent-4863410
https://enviroliteracy.org/which-animal-carries-the-rabies-virus/
Afaik, and I've looked, there's no single "varmint" that is more or less likely to carry rabies.
Unless you consider opossum a varmint, they do have a lower chance to carry it, but I've never thought it them as a problematic species in the same way as other critters that share spaces with humans. Like, most possums aren't going to eat your chickens or your cat, they aren't predators in that way, and they don't eat crops with any regularity. They'll eat the hell out of eggs or small birds, but even that isn't a super common thing because they have to be short on food to go where humans are active like you would be if you raised chickens.
But the usual suspects, raccoons, foxes, coyote, that kind of critter don't have any special proclivity for it, or unusual physiology to reduce infection rates.
I went digging after we had a local "invasion" of coyote years ago, and then again in 2023 when we got chickens. Wanted to know if there were any I should be more trigger happy towards in that regard, and there isn't.
Thing is, if one or another of the usual varmints is at a high population in your area, the chances go up that they'll have a reservoir of it because there's more proximity, and more of them out there messing with other critters that might infect them. But it isn't because they're a fox or whatever, it's about population density. Iirc, and I didn't dig too deep, foxes got a reputation for it because their habitats overlap with so many other species that more people saw foxes with rabies, but it didn't represent anything unique to foxes.
Foxes in places where they’re the alpha scavenger; raccoons where they are. What other top scavengers are there globally?
