I learned this today. Cats can jump up to 6 times their length because of their powerful hind legs and their flexible joints and vertebrae.
Cats can jump 6 times their length, approximately 180cm. It is obviously not fair to make a straight comparison, but a human would have to jump a little over 10m to equal this. We obviously can’t. The world record for the human high jump is 2.45m. 7.5m short.
Cats have a number of advantages over us when it comes to jumping. Firstly, they are much lighter. The average weight for a cat is 4kg. However, that doesn’t automatically mean that we would be able to jump so high if we were much lighter. We can take larger cats as proof of this. Bengal tigers have an average weight of 227kg. That is far heavier than most humans and any human who weighed that much would not be considering making a vertical jump. The tiger can still make a 4m vertical jump and an 11m horizontal jump.
The second thing is the muscles they have in their back legs. Cats have extremely strong muscles in their hind legs which can generate a lot of sudden force. The muscles are made of quick-twitch fibers which can release a lot of power very quickly. The muscles are coiled and released in the same way that a spring would be.
The third thing is their spine. Cats have an extremely flexible spine which helps them when they jump. Their spine is flexible because they have a special, flexible, elastic cushioning on the disks of their vertebrae and they have 53 vertebrae. Humans have 24 vertebrae. This allows it to rotate more than many other animals. This flexible spine allows them to coil themselves up more and extend more, like a spring, and gain extra height.
The fourth thing is their flexible body. Cats can contract or extend their bodies far more than we can because of two main reasons. Their shoulder blades are attached to their body by muscle and not bone. This means that they can move their shoulders in ways that we can only dream of. They also only have very small collarbones. These two things are the reason that they can fit through tiny spaces, but they also help the cat get extra height when it jumps. The cat can contract as small as possible at the start of the jump, extend to its maximum range in the middle and then pull its lower half up at the end to get even more height.
The fifth thing is their knowledge that they will be able to land safely or survive if they miss. Cats have a very long tail that contains a large number of vertebrae. This tail acts as a counterweight that the cat can move at will, giving cats exceptional balance. When they jump, they know that they will be able to balance on whatever they land on.
They also know that they will survive if they miss. Their flexible legs allow them to cushion the impact of a fall and slow down their body. Cats can also right themselves when they fall off something. They have an innate ability called the “cat righting reflex”. When they fall from something upside down, their inner ear (the vestibular apparatus) tells them which way is down. They rotate the front half of their body, then the rear half of their body, then extend their legs to take the impact.
When cats are about to make a big jump, they spend a long time looking at the point they will jump to. At this point they are judging the distance and working out how much energy they will need for the jump. They don’t want to over or under jump. They also fidget a little. This movement allows them to test the stability of the ground they are standing on in preparation for the jump.
So, cats can jump over 6 times their length because they have strong fast-twitch muscles in their rear legs that give them a huge push. They have a flexible spine and body which allows them to perform in the same way as a spring. They are very light with less dense bones, and they have a tail that allows them to balance on whatever they land on. They also know that if they miss, they will survive the fall and be able to try again another day. And this is what I learned today.
Sources
https://lisbdnet.com/how-high-can-a-lion-jump/
https://www.hillspet.com/cat-care/training/managing-your-cats-jumping
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17492802
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_righting_reflex