Cause of short circuit

What is the cause of short circuit. Normally people saying about water,exposing wire. How about ant? Believe it or not?
I got one jug kettle for boiling water. I go back weekly to my home town. The next week i came back i found my kettle(the basement) fill with ant. When i opened the electricity, the power plug is off.(tripp).. i called the technician, the technician the kettle got problem. Out of curiosity, i opened the cover of the heating basement,to my surprise, it filled with thousands of ant(dying and alive). I slowly picked up the corpse of ant and clean up of the ant. At last, my jug kettle refunction again.
Cause of short circuit is ants.
Surprise or not?