When I was in Vegas there was an interesting story on the TV about a falling cat. The cat had fallen from some ludicrously high height (11 stories I think) and survived the fall. The cat was dubbed miracle cat, I mentioned to my fellow travelers that I was surprised it could survive a fall from that height and I forgot about it.
When I got home however I got to thinking about how different heights of falls must be different for different species. When I was just a tiny munchkin I make the assumption that what matter primarily was the size of the animal, for example a hamster could not fall from very far whereas we could fall farther. This is *quite* obviously wrong (I’m picturing dropping an Elephant off a building and seeing how it does), I had not thought to come up with a new hypothesis however. I went in search of answers.
The first thought is that the heavier an animal is the greater the force that would be exerted upon the creature when hit the ground. I was happy with that postulate as it explained why insects all survive quite high falls whereas we don’t. When I went to confirm it I came upon another variable I had not considered. The surface area of the animal as it falls also has an effect on the animal’s terminal velocity. This led me to a particularly interesting article on the falling cat I heard about in Vegas.
Apparently the most lethal height for a cat to fall from is around 7 stories, then as the height increases cat fatalities decrease as well. This seems at first counter intuitive. What happens is as cats fall they right themselves, then they spread their legs apart to increase their surface area and decrease their terminal velocity. The process takes some period of time. Before hitting the ground the cat must accomplish this process and slow any velocity above it’s terminal velocity to maximize it’s chances of survival.
If this interests you then you should check out this cool post on the use of tails in geckos. After watching hopefully you never try to catch a gecko and accidentally pull it’s tail of in the process again, They need that tail!!!
Joel out.