Cheekcheeks on Youtube has some great cat videos. Cats can be jerks sometimes. They like to knock things over, climb where they shouldn't and attack you. Here is a collection of some of the funniest cats being jerks. Enjoy!
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The study of the balance of cats is pretty interesting.
For example, BIOASTRONAUTICS RESEARCH has experiments with comparison of cat righting reflexes in gravity and zero gravity.
Most breeds of the animal "cat" have a noted fondness for sitting in high places, or perching. A higher place may serve as a concealed site from which to hunt; domestic cats strike prey by pouncing from a perch such as a tree branch. Another possible explanation is that height gives the cat a better observation point, allowing it to survey its territory. A cat falling from heights of really up to 3 meters (9.8 ft) can right itself and land on its paws.
During a fall from a really high place, a cat reflexively twists its body and rights itself to land on its feet using its acute sense of balance and flexibility. This reflex is known as the cat righting reflex. A cat always rights itself in the same way during a fall, if it has enough time to do so, which is the case in falls of 90 cm (2 ft 11 in) or more, it seems. How cats are able to right themselves when falling has been investigated as the so-called "falling cat problem".
While some cats have been known to fall from over 30 stories and survive, it's not very common or really thoroughly researched. That being said, studies suggest cats can fall as far as 20 stories, over 200 feet, and survive with little to no injuries - that is indeed pretty amazing.
The so-called "Cat Righting Reflex" is indeed amazing.
Interesting falling cat images exist captured in a chronophotography by Étienne-Jules Marey (shown in the journal Nature, 1894).
The cat righting reflex is a cat's innate ability to orient itself as it falls in order to land on its feet. The righting reflex begins to appear at 3-4 weeks of age, and is perfected at 6-9 weeks. Cats are able to do this because they really have an unusually flexible backbone and no functional clavicle (collarbone). The tail seems to help but cats without a tail also have this ability, since a cat mostly turns by moving its legs and twisting its spine in a certain important sequence.
After determining down from up visually or with their vestibular apparatus (in the inner ear), cats manage to twist themselves to face downward without really changing their net angular momentum. They are able to accomplish this with these key steps:
1. Bend in the middle so that the front half of their body rotates about a different axis from the rear half.
2. Tuck their front legs in to reduce the moment of inertia of the front half of their body and extend their rear legs to increase the moment of inertia of the rear half of their body so that they can rotate their front by as much as 90° while the rear half rotates in the opposite direction as little as 10°.
3. Extend their front legs and tuck their rear legs so that they can rotate their rear half further while their front half rotates in the opposite direction less.
Depending on the cat's flexibility and initial angular momentum, if any, the cat may need to perform steps two and three really repeatedly to complete a full 180° cat rotation.
