Lindy Mayfield wrote: > Sean Schouten wrote: > > On 2/11/06, William Chops Westfield wrote: > > > There was an article in Scientific American about 1980, studying > > > the fates of cats who suffered falls from tall buildings. Interesting > > > stuff; apparently cats have at least two modes of fall correction, and > > > there's a danger region in initial altitude where injuries are more > > > severe; It's too high for "land on your feet mode", and not high > > > enough for "parachute mode" to come into play. There's even a name > > > for the typical pattern of injuries: "High Rise Syndrome." > > > > Parachute mode? That sounds severe! Does that mean that I can throw one > > out of an airplane and it will still manage to survive the fall? > > My friend's cat fell from the top floor of like a 5 or 6 story build in > Vienna. She found it a week later hungry, but otherwise ok. Yeah, I read the SciAm article, too. It seems that for the first half second or so, the cat completes the actions to get upright and extends its legs fairly rigidly for the landing, which works fine for falls up to about 10 to 15 feet or so. But after about one second, its muscles relax, the legs spread out, and although it pancakes into the ground pretty hard, it generally suffers no severe injuries from the landing other than the occasional chipped teeth, etc. But for falls between 15 and 30 feet, the cat is transitioning from "rigid" mode to "relaxed" mode, and injuries tend to be more severe. -- Dave Tweed -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist