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Comment by noobermin | Hacker News Reader

Is there any reason for this? Do cables seem appetizing to squirrels?

From wikipedia:

"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.

Oh dear, I was planning to adopt a rabbit soon. Lesson taken: keep him/er away from the computer.

It's not as bad as you might think if you use e.g. pipe insulator to encase your cables.

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...

You want this stuff: http://www.amazon.com/Install-Bay-Split-Loom-Inch/dp/B005V9U... Of course they chew through that too, but it takes them just long enough that you can move the cable/distract them before they get to the cable itself.

Also, our rabbit tends to ignore cables that are flat along the ground. Only diagonal ones that cross her path ever seem to draw her attention.

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.

Might be something like this:

http://pets.stackexchange.com/questions/23/why-do-cats-lick-...

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.

Most plastic bags are polyethylene, and new ones in particular may contain small traces of ethylene, which has a pleasant fruity smell.

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.

I recall hearing that some of the plastic/insulation may have used peanut oil (or something that at least made it smell/taste that way).

Porcupines go crazy for salt:

http://blog.nature.org/science/2015/03/30/believe-porcupines...

I guess there's any number of reasons animals chew on things.

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