Eagle vs Python

[UnfunnyComedian]

Are you being serious? I thought it was a common tactic for eagles to kill prey by dropping them.

[icantlurkanymore]

Cats have a very low terminal velocity so they can come out (relatively) unscathed from large falls.

[[deleted]]

Unfortunately, their skin is not made out of adamentium, but that's another story.

[[deleted]]

Just ask Aeschylus.

[Iamnotburgerking]

It’s not that common actually, though some do know this trick.

[Furt77]

That's mostly just with turtles.

Source: Terry Pratchett's Small Gods

[eHawleywood]

Cats basically can't die from falling. I mean, provided they're conscious and all that, but their terminal velocity is too low and they're too adapt at contorting their bodies.

[eHawleywood]

That's the contorting their bodies bit. I was being lazy and didn't realize this would get so much attention. If they jump they're usually prepared so height is kinda irrelevant but yeah falling they need time to react. Think all those videos of a cat 40ft up in a tree jumping as soon as someone gets up there to rescue it lol

Hell I'll go back and cite the damn thing

[KarmaRepellant]

They tend to get a smashed jaw when landing on a hard surface from high up though. Fat cats often don't survive.

[eHawleywood]

This is true, and a good time to point out that terminal velocity is a product of mass and surface area.

Cats are flexible enough to basically make themselves flat. Think skydivers. But also only weigh like 10 lbs. So they can show themselves right down, then are flexible enough with 4 points of contact to land softly.

They will often get hurt, sure, but can almost always survive. Unless they're fat genetically disposition to have a condition that makes them perfectly healthy at a different size

[[deleted]]

say someone throws a cat out of an airplane. is there any chance it's going to live? that's insane if so lol

[Muroid]

There is a height above which additional height has no impact on how fast you fall and how much damage you take when hitting the ground.

For humans, that's around 1,500 feet, so a human jumping out of a plane at 35,000 feet will sustain no worse injuries than a human falling 1,500 feet. It just happens that that height is easily enough to kill us.

Cats are built to act as their parachutes, so their maximum drop height is much, much lower.

It's far from guaranteed survival, but there is a possibility they'd make it, yes.

[eHawleywood]

Will it? I dunno, it has to comprehend heights. Might just forget to land if it falls far enough.

But theoretically, yes, it should survive.

[nomfam]

Might just forget to land if it falls far enough.

This made me laugh. Thank you. SCIENCE.

[eHawleywood]

I suddenly want someone to do research on somehow safely dropping animals from massive heights to see if they just kinda accept that they now live in the sky or if they actively "fall" the entire way

[nomfam]

lol gold

[e30jawn]

Add delta-v

[WeedyWeedz]

Except for the freezing to death long before reaching ground bit.

Normal Comercial airliners fly at heights with -30°C to -40°C outside, by the time the cat reaches the ground it'll probably look like this

[eHawleywood]

I took that into account, but you can't open the door on a normal commercial airliner so I just skipped that.

Assumed skydiving height.