The cat righting reflex is a cat's innate ability to orient itself as it falls in order to land on its feet. The righting reflex begins to appear at 3–4 weeks of age, and is perfected at 7 weeks. Cats are able to do this because they have an unusually flexible backbone and no functional clavicle (collarbone). The minimum height required for this to occur in most cats (safely) would be around 30 centimeters. Cats without a tail also have this ability, since a cat mostly moves its hind legs and relies on conservation of angular momentum to set up for landing, and the tail is in fact little used for this feat.
Read more about Cat Righting Reflex: Technique, Terminal Velocity, Injury
Famous quotes containing the words cat, righting and/or reflex:
“As I walked on the glacis I heard the sound of a bagpipe from the soldiers’ dwellings in the rock, and was further soothed and affected by the sight of a soldier’s cat walking up a cleated plank in a high loophole designed for mus-catry, as serene as Wisdom herself, and with a gracefully waving motion of her tail, as if her ways were ways of pleasantness and all her paths were peace.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“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)
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—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)