Why do cats always land on their feet?

Question

I know it has to do with their tails, but can some one elaborate?

Answer 1

They don't. Any cat owner will tell you that.

Answer 2

my kitten always lands on her feet cuz she never jumps from too high. u shouldnt be letting a cat jump from an unsafe place

Answer 3

It has almost nothing to do with their tails.

It's mainly because cats are very flexible, and also because of the sensory hairs in the cats ears. The hairs send the message to the cat's brain that the cat's head is not upright. Their head turns and because of their flexibility their spine follows until they are completely upright. Then they kind of spread their legs to slow their descent. It all happens very fast.

Answer 4

As the other said, no a cat does not always land on their feet.  It depends on the height they fall from.  

What enables a cat to right itself and land on its feet is called the 'righting reflex'.  The cat will need a certain height in order for the eyes and a sensor in their ears to set the body in motion righting itself.

Here are a couple of articles about the righting reflex.  The second link is a nice video by National Geographic showing a cat in motion righting itself.  It also talks about the high-rise syndrome, where researchers have found that cats falling from higher distances are actually suffering less injury.  

Nothing is mention and I have never read anything about the tail aiding in the righting reflex.  But I do recall the tail helping with balance.

Purrs to you and your cats.

Answer 5

Trust me, they don't.

They appear to, though, sometimes. It's actually in their inner ear. They bend... pretty much in the middle, turning their front half of the body at a different angle than the rear end. Then they tuck in their front legs, reducing inertia, and extend their back legs to increase it. They then move the front part of their body the opposite as their back end - though the front more noticeably. After that, they extend their front legs, and tuck in their back legs so that they can move their rear end like they had the front. Once they do that, they sometimes spread out their legs/body to slow the fall.

They don't get hurt as much as one would think due to their size and bone structure, along with padded paws softening their fall.

But they don't always land on their feet.

When my older cat was young, he fell and landed on his side. Unharmed, luckily, because it wasn't very far down, but it was definitely not on his feet.