Humans that fall over 10 stories only have a 5% chance of survival. Cats falling from

the same height have a 5% chance of dying. This doesn't mean to throw your cat off a

building to test this. Biologists have already done that. In a 1987 study of 132 cats that

fell "accidentally" out of skyscrapers, 90% of them survived. One cat fell 32 stories

onto a concrete sidewalk and suffered only a chipped tooth and a collapsed lung. What

is even more interesting is the fact that the farther the cat falls, the higher its

chance of surviving is. At first this is slightly counterintuitive. The farther you fall, the

move you will accelerate, and the harder you will hit the ground.

so how can a cat falling from 10 stories have a high chance of surviving than a cat falling from 3 stories?

Well the answer to that question is:

Terminal velocity.

Terminal velocity occurs when the resistance force of the air you are falling though equals

the downward force of gravity. You stop accelerating once you reach this velocity. Unfortunately

for humans, this velocity is around 120mph. Surviving a crash at this speed is quite unlikely.

However the terminal velocity of cats is only half of that at 60 mph. But that doesn't explain

how cats have a higher chance of surviving at 10 stories versus 3 stories. Well, that's

because cats can sense acceleration;

when a cat is falling and accelerating downward, it can sense that. It has a sense that

is able to detect whether it is accelerating or not

when the cat is not accelerating anymore, AKA reaches terminal velocity

it relaxes it's body more and the impact is not a rigid

Let's walk through a hypothetical situation of a cat falling

from a skyscraper. The cat jumps off and rotates herself around so her feet are underneath

her. At this point the cat is kind of freaking out because she knows she is accelerating

downward. Her limbs are tight and if she were to hit the ground now, she would suffer more

injuries due to her stiffened body. But as she falls farther, she reaches terminal velocity

impact. She walks away with minimal injuries and hits the catnip.