Electric fence
shock barrier to contain animals or people
An electric fence is a barrier that uses electric shocks to deter humans and animals from crossing a boundary. Most electric fences are used for agricultural purposes and other non-human animal control. They are also commonly used to protect high-security areas such as military installations or prisons, where a potentially lethal voltage may be applied. Virtual electric fences for livestock using GPS technology have also been developed.
Design and function
Electric fences are designed to shock animals or humans if they attempt to cross a boundary. A component called a power energiser converts power into a brief high voltage pulse. One terminal of the power energiser releases an electrical pulse along a connected bare wire approximately once per second. Another terminal is connected to a metal rod implanted in the earth, called a ground or earth rod. An animal touching both the wire and the earth during a pulse would complete an electrical circuit, conducting a pulse, resulting in an electric shock. The effects of a shock depend upon the voltage, the energy of the pulse, the degree of contact between the recipient and the fence and ground, and the route of the current through the body; the severity of the shock can range from barely noticeable to lethal.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Electric fence” is shock barrier to contain animals or people. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Electric, fence and shock, not as a finished interpretation.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1292216. The Library of Congress control number is sh85041687. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Electric fence” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.