Domesticated cats are known to get stuck in trees too afraid to come down (since it’s much easier for them to climb up than down)…
Does the same thing happen to wild species of cats?
Ive never seen a cat skeleton in a tree, have you?
It would fall down.
Would it?
Well, I’m guessing staying in a tree is an active exercise since they are rather unstable. A cat loosing consciousness would likely fall to its side and this momentum would cause its body to tumble out of a tree…
There are also things to consider like wind or other predators…
I don’t think cats usually end up loosing their consciousness in trees.
If it stayed there too long to the point of dying it would eventually lose it.
Do you think the cat could ever find it again?
At least some arboreal cats can rotate their ankles to come down face first, house cats can’t. According to a NatGeo special I just saw, the Clouded Leopard is one such cat, and it is considered similar to the progenitor of wild cats, although Wikipedia doesn’t mention the rotating ankle.
The kitten simply has to learn to come down, backwards, looking over its shoulder, releasing its claws appropriately. Its just like backing a car out of a parking space, not impossible, just tricky at times.
I live in a city with lots of trees and even more street cats, and I’ve never seen or heard a cat stuck in a tree. My guess is that they eventually get hungry and jump down.
Cats can climb down, but they’re usually too scared to try at first, so they meow for help. If left alone, they’ll figure out how to get down.
Our local feral cat climbs up our tree to chase squirrels. After he fails, he just climbs back down.
Remember that domesticated cats are kept in a state of perpetual adolescence, with their owner taking the role of the mother cat. Naturally they call for mommy to help them when they get stuck somewhere; and naturally, non-domesticated cats learn to fend for themselves.
Arboreal astral projection is not without risks.
IME, cats who learned to climb trees as young kittens don’t get stuck in them. Small kittens have a different body weight to claw holding ration, and are extraordinarily good climbers (I’ve watched a couple of kittens about five months old climb up and down a cinderblock chimney; the slight roughness of the cinderblocks was enough to let them, at that age and weight, get a good grip.)
Wild cats are going to learn to climb while they’re quite young. Domestic cats sometimes don’t get the chance when they’re babies; some of them then do get the chance when they’re older, but they didn’t get to practice when they were almost weightless, and they’re often not very good at it at first.
My test for a cat stuck up a tree: first, remove any dogs in the vicinity, especially if the dog is barking at the bottom of the tree. Then, go get a can of tuna. Open the tuna, and leave the open tuna can at the foot of the tree. Go away for a while (so the cat, if it knows you, won’t be relying on you to get it down; and if it doesn’t know you, won’t be too afraid of you to come down.)
If the cat’s still stuck in the tree an hour or so later, it probably really is stuck. Sooner or later, if not rescued, it’ll either try to come down but may fall; or will just fall. But it may get hurt if it falls.
I feel this is the likely explanation. Animals are going to seek the easy path. For a domestic cat, that means that when it gets stuck in a tree, it hunkers down and start calling for a human to get it down. Wild cats aren’t going to expect or rely on human intervention; they’re going to figure out a way to get down on their own.
The Margay (Leopardus wiedii) can also do this. Wikipedia link: Margay - Wikipedia
It seems to me that the question is related to this thread: https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=888939 in that despite our tendency to ascribe human emotions and traits to animals, they’re more driven by instinct no matter how domesticated.*
*There was a show, possibly the one that speculates what would happen if man was suddenly extinct, that explained that even domesticated cats will quickly become feral, especially because they tend to be alone. Dogs take longer, but if they other others and are able to form a pack, they’ll become ‘wild’ once again, even if they’re all domesticated. If they don’t form/find a pack, they’re unlikely to survive.
Even if a cat was previously injured coming down from a tree, it may be hesitant to risk the injury again, hunger and/or weather will likely eventually overcome fear and cause it to come down. As discussed in the other thread, other than possibly higher level mental capacities like primates, whales and dolphins, most animals don’t deeply weigh the reward/benefits of their actions. Cat: I’m more hungry than scared, better get down.
This may seem obvious, but since it’s a popular meme, if you decide that a cat or any animal needs rescuing from a tree, don’t call the police or fire department. Call the local Humane Society, ASPCA or other animal experts. No matter how much that cat is calling out, human needs (though some would argue the point) are far more important.
I’ve seen regular cats run down a tree trunk to the ground head-first; obviously in those cases the lowest branch was just a few metres above the ground since they don’t have the ankle flexibility like those other cats. In other situations they will grip with their claws and back down.
This depends entirely on your local resources. Around here, if you call the humane society they tell you to call Animal Control, because our local humane society doesn’t have equipment or personnel to assist with rescues. Animal Control is a unit of the police department, and if the animal is above arm’s reach, they’re going to call the fire department to come bring a ladder anyway. It’s certainly not a 911 matter, but calling the emergency services dispatcher directly on their regular number saves time and gets the same people on scene.
In some other jurisdictions, this may not be true, but there’s no universal rule, and if your local fire/rescue isn’t able or willing to assist, the dispatcher can tell you who locally to contact.
Tigers can climb trees high enough so that they get hurt jumping down. Tigers have a much higher terminal velocity than house cats. It’s a problem that zoos have to deal with, because in a zoo, a tiger might get bored enough to climb a tree which a zoo has been dumb enough to put where a tiger can climb it, without giving an effective way of climbing down.