Completely wrong! The claim is actually from 22 years ago (well, it will turn 22 in 2 weeks)…
Only the counter claim is from 9 years ago.
If this thread was a train, it would be a train that some time ago had flown off the rails into a deep valley about 10 miles away from the high bridge on which it originally derailed. Salvage teams have declared it virtually impossible to put this wreck back on the rails.
Too late!
Can the train reach 88 miles per hour? Because I think it might have derailed off into the fourth dimension.
Well, it is a thread for Chronos, and I did start out with a reply to him. :^)
22 years ago, 9 years ago, right now, it’s all the same to Chronos.
I’ve seen a leopard* easily clear 2 meters in a standing jump, but I have also had some mongrel house cats that could probably do that if there was enough to grip on at the top. (eg curtains)
Might be a little more of a scramble, not as elegant as a leopard.
Cetainly my last cat (of dubious mixed origin, possibly part Burmese) could do a standing jump of 1.5m with ease and I saw him attempting to do 1.7m to get to the top of the fridge. (mixed success)
* (in a South African game reserve)
Terrifying, especially since leopards can drag prey up to three times their body weight into trees.
I’ve read some first hand accounts of people who survived leopard attacks, and of villages that were terrorized by individual leopards with a taste for human flesh. Silent killers who can leap to the roof of a building, drop through a gap in the thatch making less noise than a whisper, end a life with a swift bite to the jugular, and then drag an adult human being back out the roof and into the jungle.
Where I used to live, rural Zimbabwe, leopards were a big deal, like, don’t leave your dogs outside.
Where I live now, in the South of South Africa, they are the same species but adapted to high mountains, so much smaller. But I live in town, I doubt there are any nearby. Certainly there are in the mountain wilderness a little north of us.
I have never seen a wild one but on one hike, my then girlfriend was leading, saw one moving off the rock on which it was warming itself (this was early in the morning) very fast.
Mountain lions are a little like that here. I see videos of them in backyards posted to NextDoor pretty regularly.
Do you mean the Cederberg? There are leopards a bit closer than that to the north. The article doesn’t say, but I have it on good authority they’re around !Khwa ttu
But the ones to the east (Jonkershoek,Simonsberg, Helderberg, Kogelberg) are a bit closer.
Yeah, I did mean the Cederberg. I’ve never seen one, but my ex-wife who was in the lead on a long multi-day hike apparently spotted one. I was quite far behind her… and we were all a little stoned.
(not sure if that was an intentional use of the word 'spotted")
I’ve never seen one out in the field, but I have seen Overberg ones on camera traps.
Hello scudsucker. If you have any evidence for an animal raising it’s center of gravity more than 48” (1.2 meters) I’d be interested in seeing or reading it. The last time I dived into this was 13 years ago, and back then the best evidence offered, by @emcee2k , was this video of Savannah cats jumping next to a measuring stick.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vprEInOl1o0
My comment was:
Based on the slow-mo image at 3:32, the kitty’s head reached 7’3" (87") and the length of the fully stretched cat was about 39" from paw to head top. (Measured against the ruling stick in the same frame.) So, the head top moved 48" vertical inches, pretty much straight up. That’s 120% of a meter. Pretty good. We can’t see if it’s a standing (rather than a running) jump, but I believe it is.
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There are some new videos since 2012!
I searched for about 15 minutes, and found some interesting ones.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/IYWppxLwaJc
That one is fascinating because at 17 secs you can see the cat use its back paws to boost itself up a mostly smooth wall. I suspect that at normal speed it would be hard to detect that little boost. The video isn’t useful evidence because we have no idea how deep the pit is, or how long the cat is.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/qerL893QDTY
This features a tiger leaping to grab a big slab of meat. The tiger’s hips stop elevating at the 14 sec mark, and his feet are beginning to get pulled up — I’d say the jump is about level with the middle insulators(?) on the fence, Doesn’t seem as high as the Savannah cats.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/EMbNvHItp2s
This has cougars leaping for meat. You can’t tell how high they’re jumping, but it’s fun watching them.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Ac50gAK0JVU
This one looks like the cougar is jumping a legit 7 feet in the air. Damn impressive — until you notice the cat is actually climbing the chain link fence.
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The thread where the Savannah cat video was originally posted:
https://boards.straightdope.com/t/realitychuck-youre-an-ignorant-twat/612567/137
Another decent video from that thread.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUuiMwhBDsQ
It’s a cougar video. The best image is at 47 secs
My comment was:
It’s hard to say exactly how high the cat’s back paws get off the ground. Sometimes they’re pulled up, but sometimes they are stretched out full. I think that by the time they’re stretched out full, the cat’s pelvis has stopped rising and the legs are swinging up sideways.
Kitty’s feet might go above the man’s navel. (But not up to the pecs.) We don’t know how tall the man is, and the camera angle is good, but could still introduce some misperceptions.
I’m 5’11" and my navel is 41" high.
All I can say is that I have seen a leopard (tamed) in a place for retired/unable to be rewilded retirement home, called Cornellskop.
In my memory the jump (for food thrown onto the roof shelter) was just over my height, I am 181cm. Standing next to the shelter the roof was above my eye level.
So anecdotal, not real evidence.
Some cats, like Caracals, are known to be naturally jumpy
Sky’s the limit for high jump record-breaking dog
This dog jumped 75.5 inches according to Guiness Book of Records.
I would at this point go further and desribe it as being about a trainwreck involving a plane crash on a different continent.
I don’t want to buy a seat on the doomed plane, but a greyhound is around 70 inches long at full stretch. Unless you appreciate the relevance of this fact to Blake’s position, you aren’t getting to the heart of the debate. That’s not to say he was correct, but he wasn’t as incorrect as one would assume when one does not understand this point.
Check out the video that dog’s feet clear a pretty tall obstacle.