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Thr0w-a-gay t1_j6bhwe9 wrote

Reply to comment by Straightup32 in 9 lives by PewPewAnimeGirl

"Another possible explanation for this phenomenon is survivorship bias, that cats who die in falls are less likely to be brought to a veterinarian than injured cats, and thus many of the cats killed in falls from higher buildings are not reported in studies of the subject."

Further more

>In a 2004 study, it was reported that cats falling from higher places suffered more severe injuries than those experiencing shorter drops

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bremidon t1_j6ci3p6 wrote

I followed the links to the original sources.

Your first one comes from "The Straight Dope". It's an entertaining place for odd facts, but I would not treat it as a primary source. In any case, when we read about Cecil's attempts to clear the matter, we eventually reach this point:

>I called the Animal Medical Center to see if this possibility had been considered. The original authors were long gone, so I spoke to Dr. Michael Garvey, head of the medical department and current expert on “high-rise syndrome.”

Dr. Garvey was adamant that the omission of nonreported fatalities didn’t skew the statistics. He pointed out that cats that had fallen from great heights typically had injuries suggesting they’d landed on their chests, which supports the “flying squirrel” hypothesis.

So while technically true that this point was raised in the not-entirely-primary-source article, it was pretty much dismissed by the expert interviewed for that same article. When pressed, apparently Dr. Garvey allowed that reasonable people could disagree, but the fact that the expert falls on the "it's wrong" side, this point should probably be taken with suspicious eyes.

Your second one is more interesting. There have been different studies over the years and in some of them, we do get reports of more serious injuries in cats falling from higher places. In others, there is a dramatic decrease in injuries. As far as I was able to gather in a cursory look through the data, this is still a completely open question as to which data is more representative. Perhaps someone has a metastudy on this.

The nature of the injuries changes dramatically, though. At higher distances, cats can prepare themselves, get righted, and loosen up their legs for landing. The injuries tend to be more in their chest cavity. At shorter distances, the injuries tend to be more of the "broken limb" variety.

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mattot999 t1_j6d48wv wrote

Are you implying an expert may be better informed on a topic relevant to them? I bet you'll tell me something silly like I should consider their opinion on the matter /s

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DasMotorsheep t1_j6d4hfm wrote

I don't know man. If a child can hold a cat in their arms belly up, drop it and the cat will land feet-first, I somehow doubt that "a couple of stories high" is somehow not enough time for the cat to right itself and prepare for the impact.

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bremidon t1_j6ds2pf wrote

I would recommend that you follow the links in the Wikipedia article to the original sources. You'll see why the data makes clear that there is a difference. (The cutoff seems to be around 6 to 7 stories)

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Straightup32 t1_j6dob7z wrote

Wel positioning itself isn’t the only issue. It’s reducing the terminal velocity. I can pull my parachute 50 feet before I hit the ground and it will fully expand. But does it have enough time to reduce my terminal velocity? Probably not

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lefthandedgun t1_j6czwrp wrote

If he was adamant about that, Dr. Garvey is a pompous twit who knows next to nothing about statistics...and everything else merely demonstrates that while they might sometimes survive, cats clearly don't make jumps of such heights safely.

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