We all know cats always land on their feet. But how far can a cat fall and still survive?
Humans that fall over 10 stories only have a 5% chance of survival. Cats falling from
the same height have a 5% chance of dying. This doesn't mean to throw your cat off a
building to test this. Biologists have already done that. In a 1987 study of 132 cats that
fell "accidentally" out of skyscrapers, 90% of them survived. One cat fell 32 stories
onto a concrete sidewalk and suffered only a chipped tooth and a collapsed lung. What
is even more interesting is the fact that the farther the cat falls, the higher its
chance of surviving is. At first this is slightly counterintuitive. The farther you fall, the
move you will accelerate, and the harder you will hit the ground.
so how can a cat falling from 10 stories have a high chance of surviving than a cat falling from 3 stories?
Well the answer to that question is:
Terminal velocity.
Terminal velocity occurs when the resistance force of the air you are falling though equals
the downward force of gravity. You stop accelerating once you reach this velocity. Unfortunately
for humans, this velocity is around 120mph. Surviving a crash at this speed is quite unlikely.
However the terminal velocity of cats is only half of that at 60 mph. But that doesn't explain
how cats have a higher chance of surviving at 10 stories versus 3 stories. Well, that's
because cats can sense acceleration;
when a cat is falling and accelerating downward, it can sense that. It has a sense that
is able to detect whether it is accelerating or not
when the cat is not accelerating anymore, AKA reaches terminal velocity
it relaxes it's body more and the impact is not a rigid
Let's walk through a hypothetical situation of a cat falling
from a skyscraper. The cat jumps off and rotates herself around so her feet are underneath
her. At this point the cat is kind of freaking out because she knows she is accelerating
downward. Her limbs are tight and if she were to hit the ground now, she would suffer more
injuries due to her stiffened body. But as she falls farther, she reaches terminal velocity
impact. She walks away with minimal injuries and hits the catnip.