In 1894, French physiologist Étienne-Jules Marey tried to resolve a particularly vexing question in science: How do cats always seem to land on their feet when they fall? Using the era’s rudimentary ...

Learn how variations in different parts of the spine allow cats to land upright.

The research continues, with a paper published in the journal The Anatomical Record reporting on new experiments to analyze the flexibility of feline spines. Over the centuries, scientists have ...

Where would physics be without cats? No Schrödinger’s thought experiment; no FDC Willard; no Cheshire cat effect in quantum realm; really, the entire discipline would be reduced. But cats without ...

(Linas Toleikis/iStock/Getty Images Plus) For more than a century, scientists have been trying to figure out how a falling cat lands on its feet with such astonishing regularity. A famous scientific ...

When falling cats turn themselves the right way up before they hit the ground, they have a secret trick: a region of their spine that is exceptional at twisting. “We compared the flexibility of the ...