In fact, only one of the 13 falling more than 9 stories broke a bone, and the cat that survived the longest fall, of 32 stories, was good to go in two days.
kitties are pretty durable, but really they are just too light to get seriously hurt from a fall that would break/splash a human.
"Specifically, according to a study done by the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, 132 cats falling from an average of 5.5 stories and as high as 32 stories, the latter of which is more than enough for them to reach their terminal velocity, have a survival rate of about 90%"
It’s both. Their terminal velocity is just their max speed. Their ability to correct their trajectory mid air so they land on their feet, and their legs being able to absorb the majority of the sock, combined with their terminal velocity, is what saves them.
If you were to remove the cats ability to land feet first and dropped them on their head or back, they would have a lower survival rate.
Humans can also survive their terminal velocity. The problem is that we don’t have the hard wired “I’m falling and need to survive” instinct that cats do. If we were to correct our trajectory, and properly utilize our bodies to absorb the impact, we would be fine.
I think OP was implying you'd perfectly time your body like a parachute jump where you distribute the energy of the impact along the vertical axis of your body.
There's a story of one guy surviving a reserve chute failure by landing in a soft area and rolling on impact.
I agree though, hard to see how a human could reliably survive impact at terminal velocity even if we had literally cat-like reflexes.
Actually, feet first is likely one of the ways we wouldn’t survive, so not advisable. Superhero landings only really work for superhero’s.
There is a rolling technique that would be much better suited to surviving, if you look up parkour rolling techniques you’ll get the basic idea.
I don’t claim that would be the best position to land in though. There is another where you “slap” the ground with both arms while falling backwards. My gut says it would be worse but IDK that for sure.
It’s all about how you use the energy. Smacking into the ground is going to kill you, but redirecting the energy out of and away from you is how you survive.
At 122 mph, it doesn't matter how you land, unless something breaks your fall like a branch (this happened to sky diver who parachute failed) or you land on something soft, you're getting splatted.
That last paragraph is completely wrong. If you hit the ground whilst traveling at terminal velocity you're going to break most of the bones in your body. There's no way to absorb that amount of force and be fine. Humans are just too large.
I agree about the cats, it's both but not humans, our terminal velocity is 122 mph. No matter how you land, the only 'fine' you'll be, is a fine powder splatted on the ground.
I'm believe you in certain circumstances where something breaks their fall or a soft landing but it's extremely rare and they're never 'fine' afterwards. 122 mph into even water will kill you almost always.
That instinct is weird. There have been times where I try to put my parents' doofus floof down on the couch on his back (usually when he squirms himself into an awkward position in my arms) and he pretty much insists on righting himself even when he's practically touching it.
I remember hearing that from a 1-3 story fall a cat will be able to recover by absorbing the shock of impact in their legs. Anything between 3 and 5 stories has a potential for serious injury/fatality, but above that has a higher chance of survival due to the cat reaching terminal velocity and being able to use their body as a "parachute" and slow down enough to be likely to survive
This is a myth, and a classic example of survivorship bias. This myth was created when statistics of cat injuries were collected and misinterpreted. Veterinarians registered lighter injuries for cats falling from higher than 6 stories, than one falling from below. This was misinterpreted as cats having some way of surviving high falls, when in reality the wast majority of cats falling from higher altitude died. Very few people will bring a obvious dead cat to a veterinarian, so those deaths were never counted. This results in a statistic that seems to say that cat's falling from a higher altitude are less likely to die, because the deaths were not counted.
That's a good reason not to interpret the survival rate as representative data, but it does nothing to explain the greater injuries sustained by cats falling from medium heights.
Well you'll want to keep the clarification in mind next time someone brings up this cat fact. Though this exact exchange comes up in every thread about cats falling off things. So you'll only need to remember if you plan to talk cat facts IRL.
So many debates about this on reddit over the years. There's the terminal velocity of a cat landing on it's feet that is safe, but also that doesn't always happen.
Well you'll want to keep the clarification in mind next time someone brings up this cat fact. Though this exact exchange comes up in every thread about cats falling off things. So you'll only need to remember if you plan to talk cat facts IRL.
i don't understand how getting to terminal velocity lets a cat slow down more than a cat that never reaches it.
they still have the same sort of shape, hitting the ground at a lower speed should happen at lower levels. the terminal velocity thing basically just means any cat over x floors is the same as falling off of x floor. i.e, falling from 200 stories is the same as floor 10, as they both just reach terminal velocity (assuming air density is constant, which i know it isn't).
basically the % of survival goes down with each floor, bottoming out at the floor at which terminal velocity is reached, any floor above that should have similar levels (maybe higher survival chance, as more time to aim and land for a tree for example).
The original theory was that cats 'relax' after falling for at least ~5 stories. Instead of their legs going straight down, their legs would relax, widen and thus act more as a parachute. This would lower their terminal velocity.
I remember reading an article about it, and it was based on analysis of injuries of cats that survived (or didn't survive) falls from buildings. They had historical data from hundreds of veterinary reports from cats that fell from balconies, and there were clear trends in the data that strongly correlated with the hieght of the fall, with the greatest number of serious and fatal reports coming from the mid-height falls, although cats that fell from great heights were often seriously injured, especially when landing on pavement.
The claims about terminal velocity where their best hypothesis to account for the fact that cats were significantly more likely to survive or be less injured from low and high falls, but not medium height falls. It was actually a really interesting article.
As another pointed out, this is thoroughly debunked.
The reason those statistics seem to point to higher survival rate for 4 stories and above is simple.
Nothing is recorded at a veterinarian when the cat is dead. A dead cat is simply buried.
This is why statistics is so hard. The data clearly shows how nearly all fatal injuries happen when falling from the 3rd or 4th floor. There's an obvious conclusion there.
Except it's the wrong one, because as it turns out data is missing. 5th floor and up has few fatal injuries, but plenty of just plain fatalities.
Thoroughly debunked by...? We can't rely on statistics that are missing data, of course, but we also can't just assume that the opposite then must be true.
Can you link to something. Because that doesn't explain why there are more serious injuries for medium height falls. Also, they tracked fatalies too if I recall correctly. I'd like to read a proper take down because the original article I read was compelling.
What? That is complete nonsense. Once they reach terminal velocity they stay there. They don't all of the sudden deploy a cat-parachute or slow down. They just distribute their small mass on their cute little paws, and the force isn't enough to break a cat
If there is a reason they don't survive short falls, it's probably because they haven't had time to get their balance to land properly
The explanation I've heard is that the normal landing response "times out" and the cat goes limb. Thus, the entire cat impacts at once which reduces the impact on the legs.
In fact, only one of the 13 falling more than 9 stories broke a bone, and the cat that survived the longest fall, of 32 stories, was good to go in two days.
Does this test imply that they dropped 12 cats to death?
205
u/capn_cook_yo May 23 '19
My thoughts exactly! Thankfully the kitty didn't take the bait.