{"id":530335,"date":"2026-03-12T01:24:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T01:24:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/530335\/"},"modified":"2026-03-12T01:24:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T01:24:11","slug":"why-falling-cats-always-seem-to-land-on-their-feet-the-transmission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/530335\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Falling Cats Always Seem to Land on Their Feet | The Transmission"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/11\/science\/falling-cat-problem.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">NYT<\/a> It takes backbone to solve an enigma like the \u201cfalling cat\u201d problem. In 1894, the French physiologist \u00c9tienne-Jules Marey tried to resolve a particularly vexing question in science: How do cats always seem to land on their feet when they fall? Using the era\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=fAYa-yTbA94\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"rudimentary videos, opens in a new window\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">rudimentary videos<\/a>, Marey was able to definitively illustrate that cats, when dropped from a height, were able to right themselves in the air unaided.<\/p>\n<p>The findings shocked the scientific community, but the mystery of how cats ultimately achieve this feat has remained unresolved.<\/p>\n<p>In a paper, published last month in the journal The Anatomical Record, researchers offered a novel take on falling felines. Their evidence suggests new insights into the so-called falling cat problem, particularly that cats\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1002\/ar.70165\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"have a very flexible segment of their spines, opens in a new window\">have a very flexible segment of their spines<\/a>\u00a0that allows them to correct their orientation midair.<\/p>\n<p>Greg Gbur, a physicist and cat-falling expert at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte who was not involved with the paper, said the study was the first he knew of that explored \u201cwhat the structure of the cat\u2019s spine tells us about how a cat turns over while falling.\u201d He added that the research uncovered many remarkable details about how cats maneuver while falling.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/11\/science\/falling-cat-problem.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NYT It takes backbone to solve an enigma like the \u201cfalling cat\u201d problem. In 1894, the French physiologist&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":530336,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[49,48,66],"class_list":["post-530335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=530335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530335\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/530336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=530335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=530335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=530335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}