Protecting Wires, Cables And Pipes From Animals Without Harming Them

Animals, particularly rodents, cause untold damage to wires, cables and piping by chewing on these plastic products. Rodents chew because they must (their teeth continue to grow during their lifetimes and must be constantly worn down) while deer and other animals chew in search of food or out of boredom. Whatever the reason, the very act of chewing damages the wire or pipe rendering them useless, or worse, creating a dangerous situation. At the very least, the damage these animals cause can result in expensive repairs.

Particularly troublesome are rodents, which are present everywhere and can cause massive damage to power cables and wiring in homes. They chew on plastic doors, sidings, benches, molded plastic parts, cables, wires, automobile wiring - practically anything. In the wild too, several animals chew on products made of plastic such as plastic bins and containers, cables and pipes. Rodents chewing on cables expose the wiring inside of them, potentially causing a short circuit and a fire.

How severe is the problem? Well, it ranges from mild to deadly.

Mild
In response to a complaint about sagging cable and fuzzy TV reception, a Comcast crew...discovered the drooping cable wasn’t the cause of bad reception - it was a hungry squirrel with an apparent taste for rubbery wiring. Yep, seems a rodent had chewed his (or her) way into the wire that feeds the house and created havoc.
- Bowie Blade News, Bowie, Maryland Nov. 30, 2006

Troublesome
The New Zealand Stock Exchange was forced to close for several hours on Monday after rodents apparently chewed through a fibre-optic communication cable, leading to the collapse of the country's telecoms network.

Rats are thought to have chewed through a main communication cable on the country's North Island. Services were then routed to different parts of the network, but at the same time a Telecom New Zealand worker accidentally damaged a second main cable in another part of the country, causing the national telecoms infrastructure to collapse.

Trading on the New Zealand Stock Exchange was halted at 11.01am due to the network failure and didn't start up again until 4pm, although the exchange stayed open for an extra 30 minutes until 5.30pm.
- Finextra.com, June 22, 2005

Dangerous
How hot was it during the recent heat wave? Hot enough to pop dozens of the city’s 250,000 manhole covers. It’s a recurring semi-apocalyptic summer event here, sometimes with serious side effects. After one exploded in the Bronx on July 27, six people were sent to the emergency room for smoke inhalation. Ten days earlier in Queens, a cover was launched with enough force to set fire to two cars and cause the wiring overhead to catch fire. So how does it happen?

The copper electrical wiring running beneath the streets is hung on the manhole walls and sheathed in insulation, which can crack and warp owing to age, chemical corrosion, or hungry rats.
- New York Magazine, August 14, 2006

Potentially deadly
... video was shot by a long-time employee at the overhaul base at Kansas City International Airport. The whistleblower did not want to be identified but did want to expose a hidden secret onboard a Boeing 767 passenger plane. The whistle blower said, "We had to take the chairs off and that's when everybody saw mice running around on the floor and one ran down one of the mechanic's arm." The plane arrived in Missouri April 30.

The whistleblower explained, "There's feces all along this edge right here. It's throughout the whole aircraft." The whistle blower said workers found nests in air vents and dead mice in emergency oxygen masks. When mice would get hungry, they ate insulation and chewed through wires. "If they shorted themselves and caused a fire, it would go through that cabin so fast, we could have lost some lives," said the whistleblower.
- KSDK-TV, St. Louis, MO, July 12, 2006

The Research
So, why are animals attracted to wires, cables and other plastics? Studies of animal behavior have shown why animals are drawn to plastics products - the plasticizers and the aromatic odors of polymers, the bright colors and the texture of polymer products are all responsible for animals being attracted to plastic goods.

One solution is a combination of denatonium benzoate and capsaicin. Denatonium benzoate is a compound that is extremely bitter-so bitter in fact, that just a few grains put into a glass of water would make if absolutely undrinkable by a human or an animal. Add to this a synthetic compound that is like the hottest, spiciest pepper in the world, but one hundred thousand times hotter. Pure capsaicin is so hot that a single grain the size of a grain of salt would be far hotter than a bowl of jalapeno peppers.

The Solution
What the research has proven is that animals chew on plastic materials because they look good, smell good and taste good. A combination of denatonium benzoate and capsaicin alters the attractiveness in two of the three. These changes successfully solve the problem of animal damage, whether is grizzly bears in North America, woodpeckers in Norway, birds in Italy or insects everywhere.

A combination of denatonium benzoate works on the following five principles,

1. Aversion - By adding an extremely-bitter, foul-tasting property to the cable sheath or plastic component

2. Discomfort - By adding an extraordinarily spicy property which causes severe distress to the mucosa of the animal

3. Fear - By associating the smell of denatonium benzoate and capsaicin with the distressing experience

4. Training - By teaching the animal that biting into products containing a product containing a combination of denatonium benzoate and capsaicin produces a very unpleasant experience, which leads to behavior modification and the animal avoids these products in the future

5. Association and conditioning - Not only does the animal remember the bad experience, it has been found that the animal passes on the information to its progeny. The fear response and unpleasant reaction is also communicated to other animals in the vicinity

Environmental Concerns
We are guided by the principle of doing no harm to people, plants, or animals and no damage to the environment. Our approach is not to poison the animal or add hazardous chemicals. Using a combination of denatonium benzoate and capsaicin meets these goals. Furthermore, our approach has been to use environmentally safe products that do not enter into ground water resources and breakdown quickly in the environment.

The Conclusions
It is possible to actually train animals and modify their behavior to polymeric objects containing animal repellents.
Animals need not be harmed or damage to the environment could be completely avoided by using Non toxic animal repellents in objects made of plastic.
Damage from animals can be completely controlled without harming the animals.
Repellence achieved maximum by addition of animal repellents to the actual point of contact in plastics.

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