No I didn’t, but I never claimed it happened either, so I that’s OK.
Someone with a cat, a video camera, a bamboo pole and a piece of chicken liver should euthanise this thread. Any takers?
Is it. To say that you would need to know how long a puma is from hindclaw to foreclaw fully extended. Do you have that figure available?
** Desmostylus** I will not feel the need to address you again until you apologise for insulting me. The moderators have been informed of your breach of forum rules.
The difference is that there are already widely circulated alternate theories to explain the ghost sightings. There has been no real alternate explanation provided as to why so many people have seen cats jump 6 feet.
[ Some possibilities:
a: we’re all nuts
b: we didn’t see what we thought (cat took running start, scrabbled)
c: we didn’t understand what we were seeing (cat used center-of-gravity tricks, wasn’t pure jump
]
But you claimed a cat COULDN’T jump 6’ to get on top of, say, a fridge. Then how do they get up there without a) a jump, or b) climbing (fridges being all slick and all)?
I understand, kind of . . ., the idea of a cat climbing up a wooden fence (even tho it never looks that way - they must be tricky), but not a slick fridge.
Take a deep breath and image that I’m worried. That should help.
Imagine. Imagine. .:smack:
OK I am getting tired of this. There is a very easy way for you to see for yourself just how high a cat can jump from a standstill. Find a local cat shelter with cat colonies (not cages) and smuggle in some tuna. hold a piece about 6 ft in the air and watch.
Most cats will sit on the kitchen table too, but you will be hard pressed to find a cite from a reputable source.
I agree with kanicbird. Off to another post!
There are any number of alternatives to jumping. Scrabbling would seem the most obvious. Slickness isn’t really a major issue here. Even people can run a few feet up smooth walls, as all Jackie Chan fans know. With their roughened foot pads and scaling differences I don’t know what cats would be a capable of in this regard. I know that I have seen them bounce of walls, as have most cat owners, so they can obviously get some purchase in this way. Pivoting to move the centre of gravity is another option.
Well who’da thought this thread would take this direction…
Because it’s something that I would call “common knowledge” gained by frequent observation. It’s something that’s observed by everyone who’s ever hung around cats for any length of time. Cat, sitting there, then stands up with haunches lowered, looking at its target. Maybe a little adjustment and a wiggle of the ass, then whoomph! Kitty leaps 5 or 6 feet upwards.
I’ve tried to find a cite for this, but I can’t. It’s like you asking for a cite that the sky’s blue. There probably are ones out there, but they’re hard to find, or perhaps there aren’t any because it’s so freaking obvious. And, of course, you wouldn’t be asking for “proof” if you had seen it yourself. I am sure you object to the above for the same reason that the supernatural argument in GD is turning into a train wreck. But this is not like it’s an extraordinary claim, like having seen a poltergeist at work or something.
Here’s a cite about a wild cat.
[quote]
The caracal Caracal caracal can jump 6 feet (1.8 meters) straight up to knock a bird out of the air, even twisting nimbly to catch another bird on the other side before coming down to the ground.I doubt this is researched enough for you. Maybe you should do some observation, along the lines of what kanicbird suggests.
Like the Earth being flat you mean? Or the Sun orbiting the Earth? The sort of thing that is common knowledge gained by frequent observation?
Do you mean it is ridiculously simple and can be accomplished in under 1 minute using the most obvious and simple search phrases in Google?
http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=sky+blue+site%3A.edu&meta=
There are as any references as you like that the sky is blue. If something obvious is true it usually very easy to find reliable references for it.
I think perhaps you mean that it is like Intelligent Design or the existence of ghosts in that it is widely believed but there are no references to support it. The sky being blue is OTHO is widely believed and there are 349,000 references to support it.
No indeed. It’s a perfectly ordinary claim that, as you said, is backed up by anecdotal evidence and personal observations. Just like a flat Erath or a heliocentric system in that regard. Just because something seems intuitive and ordinary and seems to be supported by what we see does not make it right.
Maybe if I had the time, an animal shelter, a high speed camera, sufficient lack of faith in the world’s scientists and a deep interest I would. But I don’t have any of those things. I don’t actually test every piece of science I see disputed by anecdote and argument form ignorance. I doubt anyone does. If someone offers more than anecdote then I might reconsider.
Fair enough, Blake. I leave you with this: have you noticed that you’re the only one disputing this, and everyone else is telling you you’re wrong?
It’s not a reputable site, but it is of interest.
It’s interesting in that this site is saying that the reason people think they see cats leaping 6 foot fences is because his hind claws dig into the fence in such rapid succession he appears to scale it in one leap.
The average cat is 20cm at the shoulder, so if that site is correct a cat can clear 1 metre, but needs to scramble over higher obstacles.
So is that an argumentum ad populum or just a non sequitur? What difference does it make to the facts whether I am the only one who believes something? It is the factual answer we are after here isn’t it? We are still here to fight ignorance aren’t we? Or did the motto change to “Going with majority belief since 1971” while I wasn’t looking? I have all the reliable evidence and all the scientists on my side. I consider that a little more important than popular consensus, don’t you?
Blake, did you notice that your one favorite cite says the following:
“Power available is proportional to the mass of the muscle (m) which is proportional to the mass of the animal or W ~ m thus h tends to be constant irrespective of the animal.”
Bolding mine. Do you know what ‘tends to be’ means? That means that in MOST CASES, the mathematical expression holds. If it always held, it would say, that it IS constant irrespective of the animal. You are trying to prove something with generalized theory that does not take into account specialized circumstances.
What that statement says is that all animals who have larger muscles are proportionately heavier…with the same ratio…always. Which, just using common sense, we know isn’t true. For instance…elephants have a higher proportion of body mass to leg muscle mass than cats do. Therefore, a cat should be able to jump much higher. Are you honestly saying that elephants can jump as high as a cat?
While total body mass will increase with leg muscle mass, they don’t always increase at the same rate in every animal. If they did, then a 450 lb woman should have the same vertical leap as Michael Jordan. Obviously, that isn’t the case. Hell, look JUST WITHIN SPECIES.
I too have seen many a cat jump to heights well over 4 feet without (your favorite word) scrabbling. Yes, I know…anecdotal. Regardless…you have been shown no less than 6 cites that state a jumping height of over double the length of the animal’s body (puma’s jumping 18 feet), yet you refuse to believe these cites, and keep pounding your supergeneralized theories at us. Suck it up…you are wrong.
Your argument is the same as this: All objects fall at the same rate, because gravity pulls on all masses with the same acceleration. Therefore, if I drop a bowling ball and a dollar bill off a tall building they’ll hit the ground at the same time.
You are failing to take into account real world variances, such as the air resistance that occurs in an atmospheric conditions, and the specialized bodies that felines have. Both make the generalized theories not apply in those circumstances.
Jman
The answer is leverage.
Muscle contraction speed alone would limit a jump to 1 meter.
Muscle contraction, pivoting, and leverage that comes from bone structure allows a cat to jump over six feet.
Simple, but too lazy to support my hypothesis.
Just wanted to add my two cents.
It’s difficult to find good stuff on cats, so I switched animals. This PDF has:
That’s nearly 3 times what your cites have claimed and you’ve seen how kangaroos jump: there’s no way it scrambled up there.
Hmm…I wish I could count…nearly two and a half then…
Yes I did. In fact I took pains to point that out.
So you to subscribe to the Google count school of argument.
If I showed you 6 cites stating that ghosts are real, would you believe me?
That’s it then. You’ve got me bang to rights. I can’t possibly dispute such an eloquent argument with such a wealth of facts and reasoning behind it.
Since you stated that as a fact I am calling you out.
CITE! A reputable reference that the specialized bodies that felines have make the generalized theories not apply in those circumstances if you please.
If you can produce that the question will have been resolved. Of course I don’t think you actually have anything to support that assertion, do you?
http://www.cs.ucla.edu/~klinger/amazing_grace.html
http://www.ubmail.ubalt.edu/~pfitz/tell/gb/science/gb08_s.htm