Cats are “made of water”? Although this is just a joke, the soft and boneless cat is indeed like a liquid, no matter where there is a gap, it can “flow” itself into it.
Zoologists have found that this is due to their special body structure. An ordinary person has 206 bones in his body, but a small kitten has about 230 bones in his body.
The human spine has 32 to 34 vertebrae, packed relatively tightly together. Cats have 52 to 53 vertebrae, and the middle is soft and elastic fibrocartilage, which can provide elasticity and cushioning.
Because cats have more vertebrae than humans, the spine can perform finer movements, and the body can withstand extreme bending without injury, so cats can be stretched very long like a spring. Some movements in yoga are invented by imitating cats stretching the spine.
The cat’s shoulders are very narrow, because its collarbone is severely degenerated, deeply sunken in the muscle, presents a floating state, and is not connected with the shoulder blade, so that the cat can freely make soft movements and squeeze into small spaces such as boxes.
The flexible wrist bones on the cat’s forelimbs are just like human wrists. The shoulder joints can even allow the forelimbs to rotate 360° without any dead angle, and turn to any direction the cat likes. This allows them to easily perform actions that humans cannot do. , This is how the term “liquid cat” comes from.
According to reports, a cat once fell from a 32-story building in New York, but it survived the fall and was only slightly injured. Do cats really have nine lives? Why is it okay to fall from such a high place?
The researchers pointed out that during the cat’s fall, no matter what the posture is, it will eventually switch to the limbs first landing on the ground, buffering the huge impact. Their brains, inner ears, and tails form an excellent balance system. When falling, they can automatically calculate gravity, judge orientation, and land posture.
If falling from a high altitude, the terminal velocity of a human can reach 54 m/s, while that of a cat is 27 m/s. When a cat lands, it is different from other animals. Other animals put their strength on the bones. In addition to the palm pads, cats also have extended shock absorbers after their limbs are stretched, which can perfectly dissipate energy.
In addition, cats are lighter in weight and will suffer much less impact when they fall to the ground. The cat’s tail is also a balance organ, just like the tail of an airplane, which can keep its body balanced. Cats have thick fatty fleshy pads on their toes, which can reduce the recoil vibration of the ground and prevent damage to the organs.
Experiments have found that during the landing process, the cat turns over very quickly, and it only takes 1/8 second to complete it. How can a cat turn around in the air in such a short time?
Scientists put forward the theory of “curved spine”. When a cat’s front body turns over for a week, its whole body can use the force generated by this turn to perform reverse rotation, and finally it can turn 180°. This result is completely consistent with the picture of the cat turning around during the fall, which was taken by the scientists through the high-speed camera. Because of this, “curved spine” has become the currently accepted theory that can reasonably explain why cats can turn their bodies in the air.
This unique skill of cats has been fully borrowed and applied by modern sports technology, such as figure skating, trampoline, high jump, diving and so on. In figure skating, after the athlete jumps up, the skill of turning at high speed in the air is learned from the cat.
It is worth reminding that the research found that the height that cats can bear is also limited. Generally speaking, the maximum height that an ordinary adult cat (2-5kg) can bear is 12 meters. Therefore, although the nature of cats is to climb high, the owner should pay attention to prevent them from falling from high places and accidentally getting injured.