Question: how do birds not get electricuted on electric wires?

Ciarán O'Brien answered on 14 Nov 2014:

The reason is because birds don’t conduct electricity as well as the wire.

When a bird sits on an electric wire, the electricity COULD flow through the bird, but it would take a lot more effort than just flowing through a nice conductive copper wire to its destination. Electricity always takes the easiest path from positive charge to negative, and there’s no incentive for the electricity to take a detour through the bird.

Now, if the bird’s tail was long enough to touch the ground (or another wire with a different charge) at the same time things would be different. Suddenly the easiest and shortest route from positive to negative would be up the bird’s legs, through its body and down its tail to the earth (or other wire). So there’d be a short zap and one very dead, fried bird as the electricity took the short cut.