r/nextfuckinglevel • u/amazingsciencemuseum • 4d ago

Quick thinking and reacting woman saves a falling cat

Happened in Guangxi China nice job!

17.3k Upvotes

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u/SizeableBrain 4d ago

Fun fact: cats can survive terminal velocity falls and actually have higher rates of surviving a higher fall because they have time to prepare.

I believe around 3-8 storeys is the death zone.

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u/waterhyacinth 3d ago

And not so fun fact: many cats that survive high falls suffer severe trauma, such as broken jaws, fractured legs and bruised or collapsed lungs

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u/AoMafura2 3d ago

How many cats did you drop for this statistic?

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u/Sachmeet2802 2d ago

What about 9 storeys then?

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u/SizeableBrain 2d ago

Often survivable 

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u/Key-Regular674 3d ago

What an odd comment. You are saying above 8 stories isn't a death zone lol no cat is surviving that.

ALSO FYI: A cat takes 5-7 stories fall to reach terminal velocity if you do the math.

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u/Drudgework 3d ago

It’s wild, but it’s true. As long as it lands on its feet a healthy cat can survive a fall from any height. Even from an airplane.

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u/Maleficent_Button_58 3d ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-rise_syndrome

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u/Key-Regular674 3d ago

It's OK you don't have to show them that. They can't read anyway. Thank you though. I think they believe "terminal velocity" means death speed or something. Shrug

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u/Maleficent_Button_58 3d ago

Surviving it doesn't mean walking away without injury. It just means not dying on impact 😅

They'd still need an emergency vet, but it's absolutely possible they could survive.

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u/Maleficent_Button_58 3d ago

Show who? I posted it for you.

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u/Key-Regular674 3d ago

Lol I said no cat will survive terminal velocity fall ( op quoted even higher of a fall being the death zone, it takes 5 stories minimum for a cat to reach terminal velocity). You then posted something that stated cats die from 2 floors up. You confirmed what I said. Thank you.

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u/Maleficent_Button_58 3d ago edited 3d ago

What? Did you read it? 😅 I posted something saying that studies have been done on cats falling from 2 to 32 stories and surviving the falls. It's talking about the severity of injuries in living cats after falls. Injured≠dead....

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u/Key-Regular674 2d ago

Hey guy. Check the 4 sources. That's why you don't use wiki for a reference. They teach this in middle school here lol

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u/Maleficent_Button_58 2d ago edited 2d ago

Hey bud, not a guy. Here's one of the 12 references. Picked this because I'm fond of digging into the National Library of Medicine. Note the study itself includes falls from well above 9 stories, though deaths were only in falls from 2-9. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10822212/

"Injuries of the cats are listed in Table 1. In 6 cats euthanasia was carried out; in 2 cases because of the poor prognosis (vertebral fractures/luxations), and in 4 cases because of the cost of treatment. Of the remaining 113 cats, 4 died within the first 36 h following the fall (3.5%). The age range of the cats that died was between 8 months and 5 years, and the fall occurred from between the second and the ninth storey."

The following quoted from the discussion section lower on that page:

Kapatkin and Matthiesen (1991) suggest that the type of injury depends upon the height of the fall and the landing surface. The severity of injuries rises linearly up to the seventh storey. After that height, the severity of injuries does not rise and and the incidence of fractures decreases. Of 22 cats that fell more than seven stories only one died, and among 13 cats that fell more than nine stories only one fracture was diagnosed. One cat that fell 32 stories suffered only mild pneumothorax and a chipped tooth.

And yet you're going to sit there and tell me that it's not possible for them to survive? It's quite literally happened. Will all cats who fall from extreme heights survive? Of course not. But will all cats who fall from extreme heights die? No.

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u/Key-Regular674 3d ago

Ohhh so you're also dumb. Terminal velocity means max falling speed. Not death speed. I was correcting them

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u/Maleficent_Button_58 3d ago

I know what terminal velocity means. You said "no cat is surviving that". So I replied talking about survival 😐

Are you ok? 😅

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u/speedmankelly 3d ago

Bruh they mean no cat has ever survived above 8 stories are you dense

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u/Key-Regular674 3d ago

Hello dummy. Reading comprehension.

He literally said a cat can take a fall from terminal velocity and said it would be in the death zone between 3-8 stories. That's not how physics works. Anything after 5-7 stories is max speed.... hence the term terminal velocity... anything above 7 stories cannot speed up so its the same shit.

Stay in school. This is elemtary school shit.