The best parachutist and its five senses

by Fernando Labrador

This is the explanation: When a cat notes the acceleration in its fall, it takes a posture shrugging with its paws stretched. It lets it goes to the floor deadening the effect of the impact. If the fall is produced from a first floor, the cat doesn’t have time to adopt the mentioned position on its body.

It would be logical to think that the higher the slope the bigger the injuries for the cat. Surprisingly, it is not. The damages produced by the fall increase according to the height just until a boundary. From that point, science displays the opposite way, it is produced a decrease in the harm. Injuries don’t increase thru the height!

There is a “speed limit”. That is the moment the cat realises its slope and takes the suitable posture. In a short fall it cannot. With the “speed limit”, the acceleration disappears and the cat relaxes its position, makes it less shrugging. Then, the animal increases its surface area, thus increasing air resistance and hence the cat decelerates.

Definitely, the cat is the best parachutist. But it has an important handicap. Do you know that a cat cannot recognize itself in a mirror? The reason is that the mirror image doesn’t have smell.

Nonetheless, each cat is unique. Each one does have a different purr and a particular mewing. No two cats are equal. The purr and the mewing are as the fingerprint or the iris to human beings.

If you enjoy playing with cats, it might be worth knowing that caressing them improves your health. A publication by American scientists demonstrated that the participants after just a few months of caressing cats had a lower blood pressure and subsequently lower stress levels.

Is your cat Siamese? Then, you should know that the temperatures in the colourful parts of its body are lower than in the white zones. These shades often are in the tail, mouth, nose, ears and paws.

When a kitten is born it can’t see nor hear, nevertheless it can feel and smell its mother. Who could say that eventually they would be able to use those senses with a minimum margin of error? Until they are one year old they don’t develop eyesight and hearing, as well as physical coordination and muscle strength.

Both the cat’s hearing and eyesight are more developed than humans’. For instance, a cat perceives the ticking of a clock four times louder than we can. In this way, its ear distinguishes male or female voices and the different tones of our voices. Besides, a cat is able to listen to hundreds of sounds contemporarily.

They can pick up noises so imperceptible to human beings as the sound of the residual electric current, even from household appliances when they are off. They also are able to localise the exact position of a prey in a sixth of a second. Even though that sounds incredible it further illustrates that their ear is so fine and sharp.

When a cat is hunting, its eyes focus on the prey, and all else is forgotten. They are incapable of noticing anything else apart from the prey. The nocturnal eyesight of the cats is five times better than the humans’.

The cat’s nose, which is pink or black depending on the shade of its skin, is humid and cold. The sense of smell is fourteen times more sensitive than ours.

Do you think they use the sense of smell for hunting? It is not so. They register every scent around them: food, people and even preys. But they use it for communicating, not for hunting.

Cats have two hundred million cells for smelling, while humans just have got five million. Their brain zone for this sense occupied more space than in our brains. Besides, male cats can find a female cat on heat, since they understand hormones and pheromones.

On the other hand, its sense of taste is twenty five percent less sensitive than ours. Maybe that is the reason for being less sweet-toothed than dogs are. Nonetheless, cats have got an organ, known as Jacobson, which let them to taste the smell. Really, they savour their food smelling meanwhile eating. A cat tastes, savours, the scents.

Cats detest cold food. Remember it for feeding your cat, pets’ lovers who cares anxiously for them.

The little pillows of their feet register every vibration. It is a complex sense of touch that scientists couldn’t explain yet. A cat has got an alarm system in its tiny feet.

They can perceive an earthquake even before it happens! Yeah, a cat is the best predictor, much more than a seismic device, and nobody knows how.

The cat tolerates extreme hot temperatures. You usually see them close to the heater or the fireplace, sleeping placidly, where they enjoy a comfortable warmness. That is because of their special fur.

Also, cats quite tolerate the harmful, because they have got endorphins that they generate when they need.

Don’t worry a lot if you lose your loved cat. Just wait. The cats have got a sense of direction that allow them to find the return way to their own territory.

It is thought that a cat orientates itself through a combination of the sun and the magnetic field of the earth. Some cats cross long distances to return. They travel through hard for meeting again their owners if they move to other house.

The whiskers are very important for cats as well. If a cat loses its whiskers changes at all its behaviour, and it feels unsafe. It becomes being without aplomb.

A cat uses its whiskers at any time in its everyday life, for instance for developing its curiosity instinct. When it discovers a new food, its first reaction is touching with its whiskers to taste and identify it. Afterwards it passes its mouth. Eventually it decides whether eating.

The lack of whiskers affects cat’s equilibrium and its distances appreciation. Cats also cannot hunt without whiskers thru the night, given that they are their high-precision radars to guide. Actually, its survive instinct is completely affected without its nice whiskers.

Until this moment, science hasn’t been able to decipher the secrets of cat’s magic. Perhaps their senses are even more developed than we think or maybe they have got some sense that we don’t know. These senses are still undiscovered and mysterious. Only cats know their own secret sense where the magic dwells.

Quotes about cats:

Donated by Fernando Labrador