For hundreds of years, scientists have struggled to solve one of life’s most enduring mysteries: How do cats always land on their feet?
Our feline companions appear to have an uncanny ability to twist and flip themselves in the air to comfortably land right-side-up, no matter how they are dropped.
Now, scientists from Yamaguchi University in Japan have finally solved the puzzle that has baffled physicists and pet owners alike.
According to the researchers, the secret to cats’ unique acrobatic abilities lies in a super-flexible section of their spine.
In one experiment, published in The Anatomical Record, the researchers carried out tests on the spines of five deceased cats.
They discovered a cat’s thoracic spine, found in the middle of the back, is almost three times more flexible than their lumbar spine, found in the lower back.
This allows a cat to rapidly spin its upper torso like a figure skater entering a tight turn, bringing it to face the ground in mere milliseconds.
Lead author Dr Yasuo Higurashi told the Daily Mail: ‘The thoracic spine can rotate easily. This motion also helps rotate the lumbar spine, allowing the cat to orient its body and land on its feet.’
Scientists from Yamaguchi University in Japan have finally figured out how cats are able to always land on their feet
The researchers say that cats’ abilities come from their extremely flexible thoracic spine, located in the upper back, which is three times more flexible than their lower back
Scientists have been puzzling over the so-called ‘falling cat problem’ since the 1800s, when physicists first noticed how easily cats seemed to turn in the air.
What confused the physicists was the fact that this sudden spin appeared to defy the laws of physics.
According to a rule called the conservation of angular momentum, an object shouldn’t be able to start rotating without an external push.
However, it doesn’t take a physicist to see that cats clearly can spin themselves through the air with incredible ease.
In the 200 years since, answers to how this could be possible have fallen into three main groups: The propeller tail, the bend-and-twist mode, and the tuck-and-turn model.
According to the first theory, the cat swings its long tail as hard as it can in one direction to generate enough force to push its torso the other way.
The bend-and-twist model instead suggests that the cat would first bend its body sideways, almost to a right angle, before turning its front one way and its back the other.
Finally, some scientists have suggested that cats might cheat the conservation of angular momentum by alternately tucking and extending their legs while turning.
The question of why cats land on their feet has puzzled scientists since the 1800s, when pictures first showed how they could turn in the air without any external forces acting on them. Pictured: Images of a falling cat made in 1894
To see what was really happening, Dr Higurashi and his co-authors conducted two experiments.
In the first, they took the spines of dead cats that had been donated to the university and examined different sections using a machine.
This revealed that a cat’s spine isn’t uniformly flexible all the way along, but could twist far more in the thoracic spine near the front legs.
‘You can feel that some parts are flexible while others are stiff,’ says Dr Higurashi.
‘Cats move in accordance with those structural properties.’
The researchers then analysed videos of two adult cats being dropped from a height of 3.2 feet (one metre) to see how they turned.
In both cases, the cats finished turning the front half of their body a few tenths of a millisecond before their rears.
Both of these findings suggest that the tuck-and-turn model is the most likely explanation for cats’ incredible skills.
Videos of falling cats show that their upper body twists a fraction of a second earlier than their lower body, thanks to their flexible spines
Even though physics laws state a solid cylinder can’t just start spinning, cats get around this by turning their upper and lower body in opposite directions.
By tucking in their front paws like a figure skater in a spin, cats decrease their inertia and spin their upper body quickly.
At the same time, they stick their rear legs out, creating more inertia and ensuring their lower body stays relatively still.
Now that their head is facing the ground, cats simply repeat the process in reverse – pulling in their rear legs, extending their front paws, and swinging their lower body around.
Since their upper and lower body are always twisting in opposite directions, there is never a change to their angular momentum, letting them cheat the laws of physics to always land on their feet.
HOW WELL DO YOU KNOW YOUR CAT? THE 13 SECRET SIGNALS FELINES GIVE THEIR OWNERS
Cats are often branded aloof and solitary creatures who spend their days plotting their human owner’s demise, but such characterisations could not be further from the truth.
In fact, our feline friends constantly communicate their feelings of affection to us, whether it be through their whiskers, tail, face or body language.
In her eye-opening new book Kitty Language: An Illustrated Guide to Understanding Your Cat, author Lili Chin – with the help of animal behaviourists – explains how to interpret your pet’s movements.
Below are some of the most common behaviours and what they could signal.
Our feline friends constantly communicate their feelings of affection to us, whether it be through their whiskers, tail, face or body language
