How Do Cats Survive Falls From Great Heights?

According to QI cats are most likely to survive falls from the 7th storey or higher as this gives them time to turn & flatten so that they 'parachute' to the ground at a survivable speed.

A fellow fan . My recollection was of an 'optimal height'. Too low and, as you say, they can't rotate in time. However, too high and I don't think they can glide - terminal velocity will get the better of them. The cats need a certain height/time to spin it's head, gauge where is 'down', and then rotate it's body.

Better (as mentioned somewhere on CR4) to 'butter their back so that the dropped-toast principle applies, and said critter just spins above ground level).

I think at the moment of impact the cat is actually in a superposition of 'live' and 'dead' cat states. It's only in the act of perceiving the cat after impact that the cat's probability wave state collapses and we see the cat as alive; although in an alternate universe the poor cat perishes. Unless the cat's owner is Roger Penrose instead of Irwin Schrodinger.

http://cr4.globalspec.com/thread/76773/Problem-with-the-Cat

If nobody is there to hear it, can't we just get another ?

What? waste more butter?

I imagine they use something like this :

You could of course spin it up before the drop like the Barnes Wallis famous Bouncing Cat
Del

The're so fluffy they just bounce....

They don't all make it....

Well, My mothers Siamese Cat (which I supplied) would never go away from the third floor appartment---------exept FLY after some bird and land in the gardens below !! At least tree times as far as I can remember !!!!!

It ( the cat ) had a couple of medical problems over its livespan but this had nothing to do with the FLYING adventures.

He died at the vets needle at some 16 years with OLD CAT problems.

I think they go into a flying / sailing mode. Land on their streched out legs, absorbing impact etc.

Trow a cat into the air while playing (just a few feet) and whatch it turning and landing ! Even seems to enjoy it and wants to do it again!

My neighbors cat was walking a railing on a second floor balcony and fell. It died as a result of the fall, true story. I think it had used up all its nine lives. Is there an experiment for this phenomenon? How do you measure the number of lives left?

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Del

Its all to do with "cat anatomy"....

They can land from great heights just as they can jump great heights!

It's all in the legs and muscles. The muscles for the want of a better description are dual function, and work on a similar basis to a rubber band.

To jump the cat coils up power within the muscle, lets it go and jumps! Landing is the opposite.. legs out and muscles act like big shock absorbers.

and of course it helps to be the right way up or down.. so the cat lands on its feet. That is all to do with the tail..

The cats skelital structure is designed in a way that when landing, its shoulder blades retract like large shock absorbers back behind the body! Check out this amazing video which shows and explaines it all with live x-ray images! It also goes into the 'rolling in the air to face the right direction' technique!

The landing would have to be purr-fect otherwise it could lead to a catastrophe of cataclysmic proportions leading to consignment to the catacombs forever. We could experiment with catapulting felines to various heights to categorise the results but I fear that this would just be a catalogue of errors, possibly a catalyst for lots of caterwauling.

I remember being shown a video (at school? or on TV during those years?) of a cat dropped from a "reasonable" height and its landing captured in on film. Watching it in slo-mo, it was possible to see that the cat touched down with all four feet and its back twisted, then bounced, untwisted its back and landed properly. We were then told it used the bounce to absorb the impact energy.

It seemed unlikely at the time, but did anyone else see this or know if it was a hoax?

Watching my own cats jump from roofs (and this bunch are prodigious jumpers - 2-3' backwards from a standing/lying start is normal), they don't use this. I have had occasion to check jaws for injury as they appear to have slammed chins into ground when landing. One kitten, having got onto a single story roof, did the "Mum I'm stuck" routine, until I bent over and called him, whereupon he used my back as a springboard to the ground. The next time, he ignored me and jumped straight to the grass.

A previous cat (yup Safi) jumped from a first (US second) floor window to grass with no ill effects. I don't remember a bounce....I haven't let this lot try.

Don't y'all know that cats attend "Jump School" at Ft. Benning GA?

The QI rule seems to apply to the cases I know. A cat of ours landed on a garden having taken off from the 8th storey, she was just a little dizzy. The guys at the vet clinic told their record for a surviving cat was from the 16th floor (some bones broken). And we know cases of cats dead after falling from the 1st and 5th floor.

But then cats down here live 7 lives only, not 9 as in the US.

brgds

Snel

The ANATOMY of the cat is capable of absorbing shock which cannot be tolerated by other living creature. Further, I was told that the bones of cat is much inner into the body than other living animals. I do not know how far this is correct.

DHAYANANDHAN.S

What I learnt earlier is the ANATOMY of the body of the cat is such it can with stand an Impact (while falling) than any other mammal.

Secondly, the moment the cat senses that it is falling down, it will adjust it body in such a way that while touching the ground - it will fall on its back and the legs will be parallel to the ground and it will never land straight on its leg.

This sort of anatomy is a special gift for the cat, given by nature.

Similarly there are so many wonders in nature - like the bats have no eyes, (radar is found on this principle of echo-reflection), snakes do not have ears, having sensation of hearing through the external ,tissues in stomach, male scorpians will die while it mates with female scorpian, female scorpian will die during first delivery and so on

DHAYANANDHAN.S

If I follow your reasoning correctly, a tortoise would be perfectly OK. That's a big 'if'.

Whilst not advocating experiments, human infants can survive surprisingly good falls. My understanding is this is down to flexibility.

Not convinced that they land on their backs, but they do have very fast reactions. I've no time to find a video link, but a falling cat will turn it's neck to observe how far and fast it's falling, twist it's body, etc. Exactly how it survives that instant of impact is a mystery. Flexible tendons/joints and a good mass/volume ratio ? I'm not sure, but they are evolved as 'pouncing critters'.

It's not that amazing; Various critters (eg flea) can leap and survive a landing 'impact' many times their own height.