Everyone says that cats always land on their feet, but is this true? No, however, in most situations, yes. Scientists were puzzled for years, because of photographs of cats being held upside down by their feet, yet being able to rotate their body, and then stop rotating so they could land on their feet. It had seemed that cats were defying the laws of physics.
It wasn’t until 1969 that experts had cracked the code, they had not considered the cat’s body as more than a cylindrical object. When a cat starts falling, they rotate their upper and lower body in opposite directions, causing the angular momentum’s change to be zero. This is also known as, ‘Righting reflex’ which a built-in sense of balance from the vestibular apparatus in their ear, which allows them to quickly orient themselves mid-air and land safely on their paws. Yet, there’s more behind just rotating their body. Cats use another technique, which figure skaters use as well. They reduce their inertia by pulling their upper paws close to their body, causing their upper body to rotate quickly around its axis. Their hind legs do the opposite, stretching them out as far as possible to create the most amount of inertia, and their upper body rotates heavily, while their lower half rotates less in the opposite direction. When they get in the right position, or aligned with the ground, they extend their front paws and tighten their hind paws. Following this, they would always land on their feet, following laws of physics.
However, the laws of physics state, that ‘the higher the fall, the harder the impact’, yet a study from the 1980 proves that cats break this, around 130 cases of cats falling from the 32nd floor or higher were documented, and veterinarians made a shocking observation. When some cats fell from lower floors, such as the 6th floor, versus when a cat fell from the 11th floor, the lower fall had seemed to injure the cat more than the higher. This was likely because on the higher floors, they had more time to react, giving them more time to act so they can land more safely.
RELATED STORIES:
https://enviroliteracy.org/why-is-a-cat-able-to-land-on-its-feet-after-a-fall/
https://thingsyoudidntknow.com/why-cats-always-land-on-their-feet/
https://vetexplainspets.com/why-do-cats-land-on-their-feet/#
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-cats-land-on-their-feet-physics-explains/
https://petpress.net/cat-landing-on-feet/
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