If this is so, it’s very likely that interspecies infections would take place. Like most have said, the animals would more than likely stay away from infected attackers. Though I find this notion, or more like a optimistic rule of slow and clumsy undead moaners, as a misplaced faith in hoping the beloved “documentaries” we hold dear, are accurate. I imagine it would be more like 28 days later, with freshly infected “undead” retaining much of their motor skills. At this early stage, they may be even more swift and enduring than a healthy, uninfected human. They could possibley catch animals. The thought of cats is the one I would be worried about most, but I think the most likely are rats, mice and maybe the mosquitos.

I would like to omit birds, because I don’t recall birds being suseptible to rabies, but you never know. All candidates are possible.

Another thing you forgot, aligators/crocodiles/frogs/other amphibious animals. They all go back and forth between land and water meaning if it can spread to them crocodiles have a natural ability to run at 30 mph if i remember correctly… or mabey it was aligators… well one of them does. Frogs don’t bite, but they can pee on you and possibly infect you that way through a wart.

Another thing, if zombies were to actually come about nothing would work except natural instincts meaning animals will act exactly the same as normal only slightly less brain function. People on the other hand only have one natural instinct which is the ability to breathe (eating has to be taught its not something you learn on your own as a child). All other instincts have to be learned from someone who happened to develop their own instincts due to their own lifestyle. That also means with the exception of speach humans will act exactly as they did prior to zombification (this means factory workers for 40 years will still be able to do their job as zombies) also they would probably be moderately retarded as far as brain function goes. All the violence would be a result from desperation (as the natural habbit to eat out or at home would most likely still be there till food ran out) and starvation. This also means that vegitarians that have the instinct to go for veggies would probably start eating grass and trees and die off from lack of noticing those poisonous red berries or that poison ivy/oak/sumak that is starting to cause their throat to swell up on the inside. That principal would definately apply to animals, after a few days of no food in their normal location they get rather violent. If youve ever forgotten to feed your dog for a few days you know exactly what I’m talking about. As for herbavores even if they were to get infected I wouldn’t worry too much as their teeth are not designed for biting into flesh the way omnivores and perdators are. That also means once all those bears you were talking about run out of fish and the various types of plants that they can eat you’re completely screwed if you live in a bear populated area.

Anyway my main point is if a zompocalypse happens you most likely won’t realize it until all the normal food is gone and you are staring at one of your neighbors is trying to take a bite out of you or one of your other neighbors, and by then its already waaaay too late to get out or prepared.

Blood-drinking mosquitoes only drink blood when they need supplements for their eggs. Normally, they drink nectar like the males. I’d hope that zed mosquitoes wouldn’t feel the urge to breed so it could only be passed if there remains a significant amount of virus-free mosquitoes that, to devleop eggs, feed on the blood of the infected.

Now if these solanumbulists did not have this animal revulsion element, then there would be a chance for mutations allowing cross species mutations. In that case, on the up side, the zombies would decompose normally and have an extremely reduced ‘life-span’, though if somehow a very few people somehow survived this they would find themselves in a world that would be nothing but insects and plants. Hell, in the deep south for instance, the disease would likely run it’s course in a matter of months at the most considering the usual rates of decomposition. This means that the survival strategy would have to be changed from making a life in an undead world to one of locking yourself in a fortified quarentined area for less then a year in most places. After even six months, the dead still walking would likely be far to weak and feeble to really pose a threat. Though admitably, the likelyhood of making it that long would still be almost nil.