# Why Birds don’t get Electrocuted on Touching Power Lines?

- Link: https://studyelectrical.com/2015/07/why-birds-dont-get-shock-on-high-voltage-power-lines.html
- Published: 2015-07-10T12:26:00+00:00
- Author: 

You may be amazed at why the birds don’t get shocked when they sit on high voltage
overhead power lines. People often ask why don’t birds get electrocuted on power
lines. The possible reasons are discussed in this article.

An electric shock is caused by a flow of current through a body. So for the bird
to be shocked there would need to be a current running through her body. The current
will only flow through a closed path.

There is no current running through the bird’s body for two reasons.

[⌊Bird on Power Line⌉⌊Bird on Power Line⌉[

Bird on Power Line

**The first reason is that the bird’s body has a high resistance**, so the current
would rather pass through the wire instead of the bird. Electricity flows along 
the path of least resistance.

Read [Electrical Engineering Basics](https://studyelectrical.com/2019/10/electrical-engineering-basics.html)

 * Since the current can go through the wire or through the bird to get to the same
   point, you can think of the wire as being a highway and the bird as a one-way
   mountainous country road.
 * It is easier for the current to pass through the highway (or wire) than it would
   take the harder mountainous route (the bird).

**The second reason and more important is that in order for current to flow through
the bird there must be a voltage across the bird’s body.**

 * Since the bird is careful to have both feet on the same wire there is not enough
   voltage across the bird’s body to allow current to flow. The voltage difference
   is negligible.
 * If the bird were to touch the wire and at the same time the ground or some object
   connected to the ground, it would receive a deadly shock.

Power lines are extremely dangerous and should always be avoided. Touching a power
line is strictly ‘for the birds’.

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