Rats! The Cable Is Down Again

In a cage in animal psychologist Stephen Shumake's lab at the National Wildlife Research Center in Fort Collins, Colo., a gopher seizes a fiber-optic cable in its front paws and begins to gnaw on it. In short order, the rodent has used its razor-sharp front incisors to chew through the steel coating tape protecting the glass strands that make up the cable.

One of his rodent companions isn't so lucky. Gopher No. 2 has received the "hot pepper cable," which Shumake has smeared with a jelly-like coating spiked with capsaicin -- the chemical that puts the pow in chile peppers. Not realizing that he is chewing on the high-tech equivalent of an eye-watering habanero pepper, the gopher chews for a while before it stops and begins to gnash its teeth. It pauses, as if pondering the scenario, then drops the cable to move on to easier eats.