NEXT time you hear someone say last night’s TV was so bad they lost the will
to live, spare a thought for Australia’s urban possums. For them, TV really can
be fatal. Cable TV lines strung from the poles that carry electric power lines,
rather than buried underground, have proved an unexpected threat to wildlife,
say researchers at Deakin University in Melbourne.
Emily Seymour and Peter Brown in the university’s school of ecology and
environment have found that possums are being electrocuted. The problem stems
from the cable companies’ decision to run their electrically neutral cable TV
lines above the…
