One cat is lucky to be alive after it fell from a 65 foot cliff, according to local police who rescued the injured feline and are now searching for its owner.
The incident took place on Wednesday at Cala Del Pinets cove in Benissa, Spain. Local patrol police were called to the scene and took the injured cat to a nearby veterinary clinic in Benissa where it is recovering, according to the news outlet Informacion.
The Cala Del Pinets cove is known for its steep, rocky cliff face, with reports indicating that the feline had injured its head and possibly fractured its hindleg.
If a human fell from a height like this, they would have very little chance of survival. However for a cat, it is not totally unheard of. One cat in New York fell from a 32-story building and came away with only a chipped tooth and collapsed lung.
BENISSA LOCAL POLICE
Cats are able to survive these perilous stunts because of what is known as their “righting reflex.” When a cat falls, they instinctively twist their body in mid-air so that their feet always face downwards. This, combined with their flexible bones and ligaments, allows them to survive falls that would be fatal for most other mammalian species.
Cats may actually be better off falling from greater heights than medium elevations, within reason. One study in 1987, published in the Journal Of The American Veterinary Medical Association, looked at 132 cats that had fallen an average of 5.5 stories and survived. The study concluded that a third of them would have died without emergency veterinary treatment, but interestingly, injuries were worse in falls less than seven stories than in higher descents.
The researchers think that this is because the cats reach their terminal velocity after falling about seven stories. This means they stop accelerating and relax, allowing better distribution of impact.
These death-defying theatrics have cemented the old saying that cats have nine lives, but this saying might actually have its roots in Ancient Egypt.
The Ancient Egyptians revered cats, and the sun god Atum-Ra was said to take the form of a cat so he could visit the underworld. He was also believed to have given birth to eight other gods, so some people have linked the saying of cats having nine lives with this myth—the eight gods, plus Atum-Ra, equal nine lives.
“No one really knows for sure where that saying came from and we can only go on myths such as from ancient Egyptian times,” Anita Kelsey, U.K. feline behaviorist and author of Let’s Talk About Cats, previously told Newsweek. “As the Egyptians revered cats, the myth of the saying originating there does sound feasible.”