Cats, those animals capable of taking quiet walks on the windowsill of a sixth floor, of walking like tightrope walkers through the thin branches of trees without stumbling or of turning their entire body and landing on their legs without hurting themselves if they suffer a drop. But … how is it possible that they have such a refined sense of balance ? It looks like science fiction! The answer to the riddle lies within your ears, more specifically your inner ear (just like we humans do).
A perfect mechanism within the inner ear
In the ears of cats there is a perfect mechanism composed of five tubes covered with fine hairs and filled with liquid. It is precisely the hairs in charge of detecting any movement or strange turn of the cat and making it known to the rest of the body of the kitten. Before a fall, in less than a tenth of a second, the animal first moves its head by turning the neck and thus causing the spine to turn over, the front legs and, finally, the back legs to land in the best possible way on your pads.
Although cats are capable of such a feat and that, according to research carried out by Jared Diamond and published in the journal Nature , 90% of felines who accidentally fell from floors with heights between the second and thirty-second survived , it is infinitely better to protect our kittens from falls with nets and other protection systems. According to biologist John Bradshaw, from the University of Bristol and author of Cat sense , cats react better to falls higher than lower as they position their body as if it were a parachute , thus slowing down the speed at which they fall and fall. minimizing the side effects of the fall.
Do you want to know a little more about the fantastic sense of balance of cats? Do whiskers have something to do with it? And the tail? Can a kitten have no balance? What could it be due to? We tell you this and more in the photo gallery.
