Why mice and rats gnaw wires?

Recently, I decided to climb on the roof of the kitchen and a heater on the new change - was painfully cold, opened the roof and saw the wiring pogryzannuyu mice or rats. After that, I wondered what they need something? Why do they gnaw wires?

The answer came at once, and that's what the version most often found in the comments on the Internet:

• Rodents are very sensitive to all sorts of fields, and around each conductor, as we remember from the course Physics, is the electromagnetic field - this is what attracts the field mice, and it becomes interesting to chew cable.
• As a rule, the mouse chosen for eating only one wire, so maybe it's in its color - usually somehow bite is black wiring.
• mice need to constantly sharpen the teeth, and the wire is very convenient.

But in fact, all these versions are a bit ridiculous and implausible. The true reason why gnaw wires, that's what:

In the pitch darkness that prevails under the roof and in cable ducts mouse feels wire, which does not accept the knowledge of the long (and therefore nutrient) root of a plant.

It is impossible to resist such a case - the mouse try it, and when to eat a couple of centimeters of insulation, understands that nothing here is not tasty. And because the mice live families, each will come across the wire and tries - gnawing away over the entire length.

And so it is in reality. Hunger makes the mouse is all that somehow seems to eat.