Righting Reflex
The righting reflex is the ability for cats to land on their feet with little or no injury. They can do this more easily than other animals due to their flexible spine and floating collar bone. Cats also use vision and/or their vestibular apparatus to help tell which way to turn. They then can stretch themselves out and relax their muscles. Cats do not always land unharmed. They can break bones or die from excessive falls.
Read more about this topic: Cat Behavior
Famous quotes containing the words righting and/or reflex:
“Men have two ways of righting their wrongs, by force and by the ballot. Both are denied to women, one by nature, the other by man.”
—Ida A. Harper 1851–1931, U.S. women’s magazine contributor. Fireman’s Magazine, repr. In The Woman’s Magazine, pp. 423-5 (May 1887)
“No sooner does a great man depart, and leave his character as public property, than a crowd of little men rushes towards it. There they are gathered together, blinking up to it with such vision as they have, scanning it from afar, hovering round it this way and that, each cunningly endeavouring, by all arts, to catch some reflex of it in the little mirror of himself.”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)