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When cats fall , they switch themselves rightside - up with seemingly lilliputian feat — which has perplexed scientist for X . Our feline friend seem to defy the natural law of cathartic by reconfiguring themselves mid - air without interposition from another violence . So how do they do it ?
Several gene affect how acatis able to land on all quatern , but only put , there are two main force at turn : physics and neurology .
A cat has several ways of contorting its body during a fall to land on its paws.
" One of the reasons that physicists were surprised that cats could rotate to always put down on their pes is the conservation of angular momentum,“Greg Gbur , a physicist at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte , tell Live Science .
fundamentally , this means that if something turn clockwise , something else has to twist counterclockwise . envisage a African tea fall from a stationary upside - down positioning . By bending at the waist , the kat can deform the front half of its body in one charge and the back half in the polar direction . By the metre it unfolds at the waist , the cat is rightside - up . Gbur dubbed this the " bend and twist " example in his book , " fall Felines and Fundamental Physics " ( Yale University Press , 2019 ) .
Butthere are other techniquesthat can aid cats right themselves mid - air , and it ’s potential they employ more than one . In the " rapier and turn " method , a cat extends its front legs and tucks in its back branch , giving the back end a humble minute of inactiveness , meaning a lower amount of electrical resistance to changes in rotational motion . Then , it does the opposite , tucking in its front legs and extending the hind peg . It has an effect like to aspinning figure skater : Extending the arm out wide increases the moment of inertia , while describe the weapon close to the body decreases it . This inversely correlate with speed . As inactivity goes up , pep pill goes down , and vice - versa . Cats can also use what Gbur calls " the propeller tail , " which works similarly . As the tail assembly spin in one commission , the body can rotate in the other .
A cat has several ways of contorting its body during a fall to land on its paws.
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Such contortions are possible thanks to cats ' flexible lumbar region — the space between their pelvic arch and ribcage — John Hutchinson , a professor of evolutionary biomechanics at the Royal Veterinary College at the University of London , told Live Science . cat have tight fitting vertebra , which makes them more flexible than other four - legged vertebrate .
This power to set down on all quadruplet also has a neuroanatomical explanation : the righting reflex or reaction . Unlike a mere reflex action , like a knee joint jerked meat , righting in animal is a complex reflex , meaning it ’s tie to the witting brain , Gbur state .
Righting is a behavioural reaction to gravity that relies on the vestibular arrangement , whichcontrols balance . Semicircular canalsand sensing element calledotolithsin a African tea ’s inner spike detect changes in its quickening and place relative to the ground , prompt its muscles to move in a way that aid it bring down on its mitt . Interestingly , experimentation in the 1950s showed that this righting answer is n’t simply impress in cat from birth . When adult khat and new-sprung kittens wereflown on jets in zero - gravitational attraction conditions , the kittens were n’t able to redress themselves but the grownup qat did . Because otoliths are made of dense bone , it ’s possible that they postulate to develop to the full before an animal can properly right itself , Hutchinson noted , but scientists are n’t all sure .
However , the height of the fall also count . Studieshave shownthat cats nation with less wallop when they fall from higher than the seventh floor , for example , than low heights . This is mostly because of air resistance , which slow up the cat ’s body enough to allow it to turn . Further , cats are unlikely to turn properly from less than 1 or 2 feet ( 0.3 to 0.6 meters ) , according to enquiry published inAnnals of Improbable Research . ( It isnot safefor cat owners to by design drop their cats to test their righting reception ; they can get hurt , especiallyif they have a vestibular disease . )
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right responsesaren’t uniqueto domesticated cats . Many wild CT exhibit the same behavior , as doratsandrabbits . For cats , the most plausibleevolutionaryexplanation is their tendency to rise tree and other spots high off the footing . For coney , predation is a potential evolutionary force . As a war hawk swoop toward a rabbit horizontally , for example , the rabbit will jump up vertically , causing the hawk to fumble for the rabbit , criticize it off its one-dimensional course . Thus , the rabbit evolved a way to land upright and unharmed .
For a behaviour scientists once thought of only as an inherent aptitude for many years , Gbur said that multiple technique can be the reply .
" We have it sort of ramp up into our deoxyribonucleic acid to look for the unproblematic solution to a problem , but nature just cares about the most effective solution , " he say . " Anything that gets it on its feet faster is better . "
