Why don't birds get electrocuted when they sit on powerlines?

Answer 1

When the bird perches on a live wire, her body becomes charged--for the moment, it's at the same voltage as the wire. But no current flows into her body. A body is a poor conductor compared to copper wire, so there's no reason for electrons to take a detour through the bird. More importantly, electrons current flow from a region of high voltage to one of low voltage. The drifting current, in effect, ignores the bird.

But if a bird (or a power line worker) accidentally touches an electrical "ground" while in contact with the high-voltage wire, she completes an electrical circuit. A ground is a region of approximately zero voltage. The earth, and anything touching it that can conduct current, is the ground.

Answer 2

Electricity never goes into something and remains stationary. Even though electricty is conducted throughout the human body partly due to synapse electric responses, it is only the fact that electricty has somewhere to go OUT of the body that makes it a vehicle for the energy, and causes electrocution.

The ground is the best electricity discharge Earth has created. The energy gets evenly dispersed into flat, conducting surfaces. Another good discharger would be water. The reason that birds do not get electrocuted while sitting on live wire, therefore, is that even if the energy entered their body, it would have nowhere to be conducted to, so the energy isn't attracted to the possible 'conducting agent' the bird would otherwise make.

Birds are also very light weight creatures. With hollow bones and feathers, the smaller birds especially probably don't have the weight enough to press the live fibres inside the insulating layer that usually forms the outer part of the cables, and further eliminate the danger of electrocution by not pinching the wires with their weight. The special way in which they secrete waste, too, (as uric acid, which has low soluability in water) decreses the amount of water in their body. This in turn makes them less vulnerable to electricity than other creatures of similar size, like rodents.

Answer 3

Electricity always looks to get to the ground in the shortest possible distance. as the birds do not touch the ground, the electricity enters the bird, but it merely slowly charges the birds body up, feather's on end a bit. If, however the bird was able to put one foot on the ground while perched on the power line, then it would be a new way of frying poultry!

If you were brave enough and capable to jump onto a powerline, and land on it with no contact to the ground, you could stand there all day without any problem (if you don't mind your hair on end). Just don't step off one foot at a time!

Despite what Tsh says, the power lines are NOT insulated. This would cost too much to do, and would be far far too heavy!. To insulate a cable carrying 130,000 Volts you would probably have to have the insulation half a metre thick (probably an exaggeration, but you get my point). the cables are situated so the the ceramic insulators hold the cables apart and they have no electrical contact with the pylon and hence earth.

Answer 4

Birds don't get electrocuted when the sit on powerlines because the are not touching the ground and the circuit is not complete.

Answer 5

Birds do have scaley thick feet which don't conduct very well, however as they are not grounded they wouldn't be hurt in electricity completing a circuit through their body.

However if the bird was holding a kite with a conductor attached to the bottom then it would be a different story - Sort of Kentucky Fried Chicken Burger... Also if big bird from Sesame Street sat on the wire he would most likely make the wire sag to the ground and therefore he would be electrocuted.

Answer 6

First, power lines are insulated with rubber or plastic. Second, the bird isn't grounded. It would need to be also touching something else that would allow an electrical current to pass through its body. Don't try this. Even though it's safe for birds, you could get killed. I once saw a bird get electrocuted. Just a big poof! and feathers everywhere! It wasn't pretty.

Answer 7

you are all right but at the same time some of you are completly wrong......Ok, in England, the system runs on 3 phase supply, each ac current runs at a angle to thata(cant spell or find symbols)
anyway this will casue at the other side a 250v 50Hz supply. Now power lines have to have high voltage and very high currents going through the cable to make shure that there's less loss at the end of the line i.e. you switching the kettle on. Anyway as you see six lines
the ones on the side are one supply of a potentlal sub power station, and the other side is the same, one line is a phase of the power supply before being switched and stepped down to produce 240V 50HZ supply. Then you see the little birdies on top, that's the ground. nothing travels through there hence thats why they are on the top wire. There is enough voltage and current to fry you alive on those power lines if you could magically float up to one of the wires and touch it you would become a human torch. or if a bird flew onto that wire it would knock the system out and we would be able have deep fried bird

Answer 8

Because, current flowing through the cable needs to dissipate before it can flow through the component (in this case the bird). If it could wee enough for it to touch the ground while still sitting on the power line, It will be electrocuted. If the bird also touched one of the other two phases, it would also get zapped.

Answer 9

The reason that birds can sit unharmed on power lines is that no current flows through them because they are not completing the electrical circuit by sitting on one line only. Rather like water flowing down hill, electricity needs to flow down an electrical hill, otherwise known as a potential difference. So if you connect the plus side of a battery to the minus side current flows because there are lots of positive charges at the plus pole and very few at the negative, so the current flows to try to equal things out. So going back to the bird sitting on a power line, no current flows through the bird because it has the same charge as the wire it is sitting on. If it were to straddle a positive and a negative line, on the other hand, it would certainly be curtains ! Ditto if it put one leg on the ground and another leg on the wire. Under these circumstances there is a big difference between the amount of charge in the wire and the charge on the ground, so electricity would flow through the bird in an attempt to balance things out.

Answer 10

Because the bird is perched on one wire, not completing the circuit for electricity to run through them. Although they use both legs to perch on the wire, the body is an extremely poor conductor, therefore electrons (electricity) will not run through them.

However, if they were to complete the circuit by touching anything else simultaneously, ie the ground or another wire, or even the pylon then they would be electrocuted, as the bird is then giving the electricity a "path" for the electricity to create a new circuit.

Answer 11

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Why don't birds get electrocuted when they sit on powerlines?