There’s the saying that cats have nine lives. Feeding into that myth is their extraordinary ability to land on their feet, even at what appears to be impossibly high heights. Case in point: a one-year-old cat from Boston named Sugar, who in 2012 survived a 19-story drop with only minor injuries, Time Magazine reported.
Now, research published in the journal The Anatomical Record shows that this innate ability may at least in part be explained by variations in spinal flexibility, a physiological advantage that allows felines to twist mid-air.
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Cats’ Air-Righting Superpower
Cats’ ability to reorientate themselves mid-fall and land on their feet is known as “air-righting.” The behavior enables them to absorb the impact of landing, resulting in less severe injuries than a similar fall in, say, a human or a dog. However, the exact mechanisms behind air-righting remain something of a mystery.
To find out what particular motions may be involved, a team of researchers from Yamaguchi University, Japan, examined the spine of five cat cadavers and compared the maximum torque (or strength), range of motion, neutral zone (aka the range within which twisting occurs with minimal resistance) and stiffness in both the middle (thoracic) and lower (lumbar) spine. Air-righting was then recorded and analyzed in a pair of living cats, who were dropped into a soft cushion from a height of about 3 feet (1 meter).
Explore All OptionsStep 1: Failure Testing
The first part of the experiment involved destructive failure testing, a process that pushes a product — or, in this case, the spines of five cat cadavers — to the point of failure to determine its upper limits. This approach enabled the team to calculate the maximum torque and range of motion for both the thoracic spine (from the base of the neck to the bottom of the ribs) and the lumbar spine (from the bottom of the ribs to the pelvis).
The results show that the thoracic spine is more flexible, with a far greater range of motion and a larger neutral zone of 47°. In contrast, the lumbar spine displayed higher levels of stiffness and possessed no neutral zone. Its range of motion was approximately a third that of the thoracic spine. It did, however, have a higher maximum level of strength (or maximum torque), which was roughly double that of the thoracic.
Step 2: Observing The Behavior In Action
The second part of the experiment involved watching the behavior in action. For this, two cats were dropped from a height of 3 feet (1 meter) eight times and recorded using a high-speed camera.
The event was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it, taking place in mere milliseconds. Still, the recordings show that the rotation of the top section of the body (anterior trunk) consistently occurred “significantly” earlier than that of the bottom section of the body (posterior trunk). While the average time to landing for each cat was 324 and 342 milliseconds, respectively, the time difference between the completion of the two rotations was 94 and 72 milliseconds.
The Falling Cat Problem
The researchers say the study suggests that during air-righting, the trunk rotates “sequentially.” The top of the trunk rotates first, and the bottom of the trunk rotates second, an action enabled by the flexibility of their thoracic spine and the rigidity of their lumbar spine.
This aligns with the “legs in-legs out model,” the researchers said in the study. This theory suggests that cats extend their hindlimbs, causing the anterior trunk to rotate, then retract their hindlimbs and extend their forelimbs, causing the posterior trunk to rotate in the same direction.
But the results are not conclusive — “the debate over the falling cat problem remains,” the authors explain in the study. “Alternative explanations remain possible.”
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Article Sources
Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:
- This article references information from a recent study published in The Anatomical Record: Torsional flexibility of the thoracic spine is superior to that of the lumbar spine in cats: Implications for the falling cat problem
- This article references information from Time Magazine: Cat Survives 19-Story Fall by Gliding Like a Flying Squirrel,
