40 Cats Who Decided That Disobeying Their Owners Is Not Enough So They Defied The Laws Of Physics As Well

To find out just how cats defy the laws of physics, Bored Panda reached out to cat behaviorist Celia Haddon, who has lectured on cat behavior at Ruskin Anglia University and Oxford Adult Education.

Celia explained that their climbing powers come down to unique feline anatomy. “Cats' claws are curved so they can use them for climbing upwards. They are retractable, so cats walk without their claws touching the ground, but protract them to climb.”

Moreover, the claws help felines grip onto surfaces. “They can, therefore, climb straight up, if there is something they can get their claws into, like a tree trunk or a wall which is not too smooth.” Having said that, Celia added that “a completely smooth 90-degree angle surface would be too much of a challenge.”

Cats are also notorious jumpers who could reach the sky if they wanted to. The cat behaviorist said that “they can jump six times or more their own height from a standing start.”

Exactly how high that’d be depends on every cat individually. It may partly have to do with “the relative length of their back legs and their weight, according to a study in the Journal of Experimental Biology.”

If you’re still not convinced that felines have special superpowers, wait till you hear how flexible they are.

Celia explained that: “They have free-floating tiny collar bones, or clavicles, which are not fixed to any of the other bones in their skeleton. (Humans' longer collar bones are attached to and brace together the breastbone and the shoulder blade.)”

Plus, “They have 30 vertebrae, the bones that make up the spine, with a further 18-23 vertebrae in the tails. It is their specially cushioned disks between their vertebrae that allow their spine to be so flexible.”

As a result of this incredible anatomy, cats can, in fact, rotate their bodies 180 degrees to the left or right. So, no, you were not hallucinating, nor was it a glitch in the matrix.