Biting is a physical action not only describing an attack but it is a normal response in an animal as it eats, carries objects, softens and prepares food for its young, removes ectoparasites from its body surface, removes plant seeds attached to its fur or hair, scratching itself, and grooming other animals.

Young children may also bite people out of anger or misbehaviour, although this is usually corrected early in the child's life.

[3] The medical treatment of this injury is similar to those of a human bite, but may also involve damage of the underlying tendons.

Mosquito bites transmit serious disease and result in millions of deaths and illnesses in the world.

Trauma may consist of scratching, tearing, punture or laceration of the skin, hematoma (bruising), embedding of foreign objects, for example a tooth or hair, damage to or severing of underlying structures such as connective tissue or muscle, amputations, and the ripping off of skin and hair.

[6] Animal bites where skin has been penetrated, most commonly by dogs and bats, transmit rabies to humans.

Signs of rabies include foaming at the mouth, growling, self-mutilation, jerky behavior, red eyes, and hydrophobia.

[8] Debridement and drainage of bite wounds was practiced in the pre-antibiotic era, but high rates of infection still occurred.

A 2019 Cochrane systematic review aimed to evaluate the healing and infection rates in bite wounds based on if/when they were stitched closed.

Due to a lack of high-certainty evidence, the review authors concluded that more robust randomised controlled trials were needed to fully answer this question.

[11] The antistaphylococcal penicillins (e.g., cloxacillin, nafcillin, flucloxacillin) and the macrolides (e.g., erythromycin, clarithromycin) are not used for empirical therapy, because they do not cover Pasteurella species.

Tetanus toxoid treatment is recommended in those whose vaccinations are not up to date and have a bite that punctures the skin.

Non-domesticated animals though assumed to be more common especially as a cause of rabies infection, make up less than one percent of reported bite wounds.

Two-thirds of bite injuries in humans are suffered by children aged ten and younger.

Reports of secondary infection occurring after a human bite in children have been noted in the United States since at least 1910.