Injury
With their righting reflex, cats often land uninjured. However, this is not always the case, since cats can still break bones or die from extreme falls. In a 1987 study, published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, of 132 cats that were brought into the New York Animal Medical Center after having fallen from buildings, it was found that the injuries per cat increased depending on the height fallen up to seven stories but decreased above seven stories. The study authors speculated that after falling five stories the cats reached terminal velocity and thereafter relaxed and spread their bodies to increase drag.
Read more about this topic: Cat Righting Reflex
Famous quotes containing the word injury:
“Men have come to speak of the revelation as somewhat long ago given and done, as if God were dead. The injury to faith throttles the preacher; and the goodliest of institutions becomes an uncertain and inarticulate voice.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“A great proportion of architectural ornaments are literally hollow, and a September gale would strip them off, like borrowed plumes, without injury to the substantials.... What if an equal ado were made about the ornaments of style in literature, and the architects of our bibles spent as much time about their cornices as the architects of our churches do? So are made the belles-lettres and the beaux-arts and their professors.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... too much attention is paid to dress by those who have neither the excuse of ample means nor of social claims.... The injury done by this state of things to the morals and the manners of our lower classes is incalculable.”
—Mrs. H. O. Ward (1824–1899)