"Rodents (from Latin rodere, "to gnaw") are mammals of the order Rodentia, which are characterized by a single pair of unremittingly growing incisors in each of the upper and lower jaws"
Essentially, life as a squirrel is an 'unremitting' quest to chew s%%t up.
I can't speak for squirrels. However, owning a rabbit, you quickly learn that rabbits like to "clean up" the cables (roots) in their den—so you have to carefully guard the cables so the bunny doesn't get fried.
Owning a rabbit isn't hard or dangerous to them, but yes - letting them have free reign of a room means completely bunny-proofing it. I've lost so many cords...
Fwiw, after our rabbit ate through the insulation on a power cord, we looked for stories of rabbits being actually hurt by electrocution. There's a lot more stories of them getting zapped and freaked out than suffering any permanent injury.
> stories of rabbits being actually hurt by electrocution
You won't find any, because electrocution is deadly by definition ;-)
Joke aside, I think when they reach the wire the contact surface is not very large, so they probably get a sensation similar to touching an electric fence rather than an electric shock.
Source: we had a rabbit when I was very young. I learned quickly not to touch some of the electric cords laying on the ground.
My cat is mad for a good lick and a sniff of a plastic bag. She doesn't actually chew them but does this strange chewing motion with her mouth, a bit like when cats practice their kill bite or chatter when looking at potential prey from a window.
A squirrel made its nest in my shed once. Believe me when I say, everything seems appetizing to them. Just like a baby, except a squirrel will destroy it instead of drooling on it.
Babies destroy things. You only have to scoop vomit out of a shoe, cheese out an electric window mechanism and fish DVDs out of the inside of a DVD player 6 or seven times to begin to get it.
