Why do cats always land on their feet?
1 Answer
Cats develop an innate "righting reflex" as kittens that allow them to use sight or their vestibular apparatus to land on their feet when they fall.
Explanation:
Landing on one's feet is the safest and most secure way to recover from a fall, and cats are very good at landing on their feet. This is due to a few reasons:
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Cats learn to right themselves at a very young age, usually by 7 weeks of age.
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Cats have a very flexible spine (that contains more lumbar vertebrae than a human spine) and don't possess a collar bone. This allows them to twist and turn to greater extremes in order to right themselves.
When a cat falls, the cat uses sight or their vestibular apparatus (an organ in the ear related to balance) in order to twist itself around, feet towards the ground. Some short falls can even be more harmful to cats, because the cats do not have time to rotate feet-down before they hit the ground. However, as long as a cat has time to rotate and has developed the "righting reflex", it will land on its feet after a fall.
