There’s considerable overlap in the animal kingdom between predator and prey. Being a predator doesn’t make you an apex predator.

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Being too low to slow a descent doesn’t seem like a logical concept unless we’re talking about deploying parachutes. If a cat is capable of slowing down it’s fall, it doesn’t need to exceed the speed it can slow itself to. How could such technique slow you down from an unacceptable speed, but not prevent you from reaching that speed? It doesn’t make sense.

Puss in boots soundtrack playing in my head

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Bruh he jumped on top of the rail then leaped? That's like 3 extra feet of fall damage. 2D6.

Pretty sure cats are like squirrels in that their surface area creates enough drag that their terminal velocity never reaches a fatal speed.

Edit: that's not true, don't trust YouTube. However a Google does say they can pretty reliably survive 20 story falls and have been know to survive over 30 stories

This is easily my favorite one of yours so far. Amazing colors. Just the perfect amount of movement and light. Your work is always so effortlessly solid but this one seems even more elevated somehow. Thanks for sharing.

That is unfortunately (likely) a myth. Cats often do die from significant falls, it's just that no one brings an already dead cat to the vet so it doesn't get reported. It's a textbook case of survivorship bias.

So cute I wish he would steal me!

My money is on a guest of the house getting off on how the cat was avoiding them.

Yeah. “My cat might be traumatised and damaged but I got me some clicks!”

Yes!! :)

So the person recording terrorized the cat to the point it jumps over the railing. It takes an especially bad human to hurt animals for internet attention.

Hey, I always enjoy a good debate! And thank you for keeping it civil as well. You made some great points and really had me challenging my view points without making me defensive! And that’s an amazing quality to have!

Irish moiled cattle ?

I would recommend that you follow the links in the Wikipedia article to the original sources. You'll see why the data makes clear that there is a difference. (The cutoff seems to be around 6 to 7 stories)

Moo is the warmest colour

Heh. Yeah, how dare I. ;)

> it’s impossible to obtain any concrete fact from this si auction because it’s just open to so many uncontrollable variables.

Point to you. In the meantime I did some googling on the terminal velocity of cats and how long it takes them to reach it, and found varying statements ranging from 60mph @ 4 stories to 45mph @ 7 stories... So if we go with the extreme of 4 stories and 60mph, it could be reasonable that cats who fall longer would be able to control their fall better and actually reduce their initial terminal velocity that they reached in an uncontrolled fall.
It still sounds a bit extreme to me that a cat would need this long to reach its "ideal falling" position, given how quickly they can actually position themselves in the air during very short falls.

In the end, I guess I have to concede that my speculation and evidence really isn't any better than yours. Anyway. Thanks for keeping the discussion civil, have a good one!

I can't remember the numbers, but basically there is a danger zone for cats, if they fall from a small height, they use their landing prowess and survive, if they fall from a large height, they can sort of glide in a similar way to flying squirrels but nowhere near as affective, look at the way this cat spreads its legs as it falls.

But that only works above a certain height, where there is enough time for the cat to reduce its speed. Between these two zones, too high for landing to absorb the impact but too low to slow the descent, we most unfortunately get a squished, or very injured cat.

Now we are arguing semantics.

“In fact” is just as much a phrase used to tie two points ago as it is a literal declaration of fact.

And if we are going to take things at the literal definition of fact, it’s impossible to obtain any concrete fact from this si auction because it’s just open to so many uncontrollable variables. So the sincere interpretation would have just been that I was using it as a phrase to tie two statements together.

And for the record, it’s not like my speculation is unfounded. There are plenty of statistics and observations that corroborate my speculation.

Edit: and you seem to be missing some key points. One of them being it’s not enough to position itself, it needs time to reduce the current terminal velocity, that’s not instantaneous.

Wel positioning itself isn’t the only issue. It’s reducing the terminal velocity. I can pull my parachute 50 feet before I hit the ground and it will fully expand. But does it have enough time to reduce my terminal velocity? Probably not

apart from my speculation and evidence being based in common sense and something that everybody with a cat in their house can reproduce, there is this bit...

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>in fact, the most dangerous height they can hurt themselves is

emphasis by me

>my speculation

no emphasis needed, I guess.