by 
chiklet
ANSWERS: 3
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You experience a shock when you touch a high-voltage wire because the current has the opportunity to arc through your body into the ladder you are on, and from there into the ground. Even if you were hanging from the wire, your body would provide a conductor for the electricity to pass through and then arc the remaining distance into the ground. Birds and squirrels on the high-voltage wires are running across insulated wires, but more importantly they are running and sitting on the top of the wires, well away from the ground and offering no opportunities for the high-voltage electricity to arc through them into the ground. Squirrels who hide in high-voltage transformers don't fare so well, as they have multiple opportunities for one part of their bodies to be touching a high-voltage terminal, and another part to be touching a grounded connection. The effect is the same as touching a metal ladder (which is balanced on the ground) to a high-voltage electrical wire.
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Partially because they are insulated wires. Secondly voltages are measures of potential difference. If you raise a body to a certain electrical potential but do not have a medium for there to be a potential difference then there will not be a flow of current (and NEVER a flow of voltage - I still hear that all the time on TV etc and it drives me nuts, voltages don't flow anywhere!). No current no shock. V=IR and all that. If there is no potential difference there is no current. For example if you were to somehow touch a cable and the ground at the same time there is a potential difference and there would be a current determined by Ohm's law as given above. But birds don't do this.
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They aren't grounded.
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