3 ms·

Cat jumps from fifth floor of burning building, bounces and strolls away (2021)

28 points by cs702 4y ago

Domobran7 4y ago
A friend had a cat that survived a fall from similar height. Cats are incredible.
ryankrage77 4y ago
> the exact mechanics of the animal’s righting reflex are still not completely understood. I don't think this is true anymore. They move their head and tail to rotate themselves upright, and due to their low weight their terminal velocity is not fatal. This video has a good explanation of the process, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtWbpyjJqrU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtWbpyjJqrU Squirrels use a similar technique, Mark Rober has made some good videos explaining that.
Someone 4y ago
“You can drop a mouse down a thousand-yard mine shaft and, on arriving at the bottom, it gets a slight shock and walks away. A rat would probably be killed, though it can fall safely from the eleventh story of a building, a man is broken, a horse splashes.” J.B.S. Haldane, in “On Being the Right Size”, 1926, a book (PDF at https://www.phys.ufl.edu/courses/phy3221/spring10/HaldaneRightSize.pdf https://www.phys.ufl.edu/courses/phy3221/spring10/HaldaneRig...) about scaling laws in biology (https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.1809090 https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.1809090)
I_complete_me 4y ago
The cat jumps from the fifth floor of a burning building and survived and it's on camera. Not a single other cat in the whole world knows about it. Not one cat. Now, people, what if...?
nealabq 4y ago
Terminal velocities[1] for a horizontal human at the surface of some round rocks: Earth 120mph Venus 15mph Mars 928mph Titan 21mph Presumably you could do a little better spread-eagled with baggy clothes. Titan has the advantage that humans and pigs could fly without motorized assistance. It's like paradise. But I suspect cats and squirrels (and dandelions?) are gonna have some hard falls on Mars. 1 Terminal velocities from https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4wkd99/what_is_the_termial_velocity_of_a_falling_human/ https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4wkd99/what_is_...

28 points by cs702 4y ago

A friend had a cat that survived a fall from similar height. Cats are incredible.

> the exact mechanics of the animal’s righting reflex are still not completely understood. I don't think this is true anymore. They move their head and tail to rotate themselves upright, and due to their low weight their terminal velocity is not fatal. This video has a good explanation of the process, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtWbpyjJqrU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtWbpyjJqrU Squirrels use a similar technique, Mark Rober has made some good videos explaining that.

Someone 4y ago

“You can drop a mouse down a thousand-yard mine shaft and, on arriving at the bottom, it gets a slight shock and walks away. A rat would probably be killed, though it can fall safely from the eleventh story of a building, a man is broken, a horse splashes.” J.B.S. Haldane, in “On Being the Right Size”, 1926, a book (PDF at https://www.phys.ufl.edu/courses/phy3221/spring10/HaldaneRightSize.pdf https://www.phys.ufl.edu/courses/phy3221/spring10/HaldaneRig...) about scaling laws in biology (https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.1809090 https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.1809090)

I_complete_me 4y ago

The cat jumps from the fifth floor of a burning building and survived and it's on camera. Not a single other cat in the whole world knows about it. Not one cat. Now, people, what if...?

nealabq 4y ago

Terminal velocities[1] for a horizontal human at the surface of some round rocks: Earth 120mph Venus 15mph Mars 928mph Titan 21mph Presumably you could do a little better spread-eagled with baggy clothes. Titan has the advantage that humans and pigs could fly without motorized assistance. It's like paradise. But I suspect cats and squirrels (and dandelions?) are gonna have some hard falls on Mars. 1 Terminal velocities from https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4wkd99/what_is_the_termial_velocity_of_a_falling_human/ https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4wkd99/what_is_...