Everyone has heard that cats always land on their feet, but scientists have been trying to figure out exactly how they do it for more than 300 years. A new study published in The Anatomical Record has brought researchers a meaningful step closer to an answer, and the secret turns out to be hiding in the unusual design of the feline spine. A team led by Yasuo Higurashi at Yamaguchi University in Japan physically tested cat spines to measure their range of motion and stiffness, and then carefully dropped two live cats from low heights onto thick cushioned surfaces to observe their mid-air movements in real time. What they found is that a cat’s upper spine is significantly more flexible than its lower spine, and that the two sections actually twist independently of each other.
When a cat falls and needs to flip itself right-side up, the upper body rotates first, followed by the lower body, in a rapid sequential motion that happens faster than the human eye can easily track. The upper part of the spine can twist with a range of motion closer to what we see in a human neck than in the lower back of most four-legged animals, which is quite remarkable. This two-part sequential twist appears to be central to why cats can orient themselves so reliably, and it helps explain why even tailless cats manage to land on their feet, since the tail alone clearly cannot be the primary mechanism. Researchers note that cats likely combine this spine twist with additional techniques including tucking and extending their legs at different moments to spin their bodies at maximum speed. The study adds a genuinely new piece to one of science’s most charming long-running mysteries, and the answer, as it turns out, was written in the bones all along.
