Response to the letter

In Brazil, the main transmitter of rabies in herbivores is the hematophagous bat (vampire bat) Desmodus rotundus (Scheffer et al., 2007; Vieira et al., 2011), because it exists in great quantity in the whole national territory, due to the numerous shelters available in the nature and in the rural environment. In Brazil the diagnosis of rabies in herbivores is controlled by the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply “Ministério da Agricultura, Pecuária e Abastecimento” (MAPA), which is a federal agency, which since 1966 has instituted the National Rabies Control Program for Herbivores “Programa Nacional de Controle da Raiva dos Herbívoros” (PNCRH) (Brasil, 2009), and each state of the federation is responsible for carrying out this control program. [...]in most rabies cattle the variant of rabies virus observed is the variant 3, which is the same variant of the vampire bat Desmodus rotundus (Brasil, 2009).