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:
“My chief humor is for a tyrant. I could play Ercles rarely, or a part to tear a cat in, to make all split.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“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)