• Question: Why Don't Birds get Electrocuted?

    Asked by anon-174221 to Yewande, Tim, Melanie, Hayley, Carl, Alex on 12 Jun 2018. This question was also asked by anon-174876, anon-174147.
    • Photo: Alex Seeney

      Alex Seeney answered on 12 Jun 2018:

      I guess you mean why don’t they get electrocuted when they sit on power lines? We can understand the answer to this by thinking about exactly what is happening in those power lines.

      Electrical current is the movement of particles called electrons – these are the things that provide the energy to a TV so that it can produce sound and pictures, for example. These electrons move along something called electrical potential – the same principal as releasing a ball from the top of a hill – it will roll down, whereas a ball sitting on a flat surface won’t move of its own accord.

      When a bird sits on a wire, the electrical potential between its feet is the same – this means that the electrons don’t travel through the birds body, so neither does the current, meaning the bird is safe.

      However, if the bird were to put one foot on one line, and another foot on another line, then it would create electrical potential, and the electrons would flow through the bird’s body, electrocuting it.

    • Photo: Carl Barford

      Carl Barford answered on 15 Jun 2018:

      Each line has only one piece of the current, called a phase, and you need two phases to get things moving and cause electricity to flow – and the second one can be the ground (earth).
      Birds sit on the lines because they are warm – the electrons moving about cause friction and heat.
      If the bird could touch two lines then Fizz, it’s electrocuted, but generally they cannot as the lines are set too far away for anything to touch two.

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