My cat (which can be seen on my website) is very lean and large. He weights about 16.5 lbs. (The breed is bengal, I got him for a song as he was making trouble at the previous house. Problem solved, however, it helps to have some behavioral psych training.)
Anyway…
He seems to have very little muscle on him, that I can feel, compared to his strength. How does he do that? It seems that people like to lift weights to build strength, yet some martial arts teachers say you can get more power by being relaxed and working your tendons, etc. My cat’s body certainly does seem to have lots of tendons that I can feel. They seem way to thin to be muscles and his body is always perfectly relaxed, like a noodle.
Does this question make any sense? I just wonder how a 16.5 lb cat can jump from the gound to the top of a standard fridge (granted he is about 1/5 the height of the fridge when stretched out…he’s a bit long for a cat).
When you are small, your power-to-weight ratio goes up.
Bulky muscle can actually interfere with the operation of the muscle itself. Lean muscle is probably best, but normal muscle may be mistaken for lean when on a long frame. The long frame provides more leverage, increasing power.
Cats are naturally very relaxed. Much of what you feel as tendons may actually be relaxed muscle. (Note, tendons do not actually contract like muscle. They attach muscle to bone, and so are important to have strong, but do not directly increase strength.)
Looking at the picture of your cat, it seems quite heavily muscled.
Well, that is my WAG…
Cats jump 5 times it’s body length, so your observations are right on target with it’s ability.
As for strength, I think you have a perspective issue. I have had cats for years and I’m constantly amazed by their strength. I am, however, reminded that a cat is a more compact animal and they use it’s most or entire muscle structure when “grabbing” something. So, next time think of how when you want to grab something with one hand, two hands or wrap your entire body around it, how that must feel to the target.
I personally have never been “bested” by a cat’s strength, though I’ve donated a little skin the pointy things on their feet.
I, too, have a giangantic amazingly strong cat. When we drew blood at the vet, it took four people using their full strength to hold him down.
If Neko is like my Sputnik, theres plenty of muscle under there. Plus, cats are built to be lean mean fighting machines, whereas humans are built to walk upright, and therfore a cats muscles work in much greater harmony than humans, meaning they need less to be effective.
I agree that cats are naturally well coordinated and talented at using what they’ve got, but as far as jumping 5 times vertically his length…I’d think he’d need a heck of a lot more muscle than he has.
The first post by Phage says leverage may help. How does that work? Would a human to jump that much just need a lot (cartoonishly so) longer legs, or a lot more muscle, too?
I know he looks muscled, but he really isn’t. He’s just got almost zero body fat.
Oh, in that case. Yes, when FatCat was PreFatKitten he could easily jump up to my face in an attempt to kill me. He was probably 13" long at the time (nose to butt, not including the tail).
FatCat is asthmatic and hates exercise, hence his portly frame. Otherwise, now that he’s about twice the length as he when he could leap to my face, he’d probably have been able to leap across the room in a single bound.
The cat frame also seems to really work like a spring too. I know when I jump (not that I jump anymore often then FatCat, but thinking of martial arts training) I don’t use anywhere near the same full-body technique that the furballs do. They are certainly better designed than we are and the strength-to-weight ratio is quite impressive.
It isn’t just the length of the limb in question, but it’s also the shape, position of the joints, muscle types, and tissue elasticity. And don’t forget that the cat would be leaping with all four limbs and not just two, so he would have more force going down than a human would.
Plus, it’s not like he’s trying to lift 100-200 lbs off the ground like a human would be (leaving discussions of lions and the like out of the question at this point), he only has to generate enough force to lift 16 lbs or so, a fraction of your weight. And even though the distance is great relative to his own body, it’s still only 5 feet that he’s actually jumping.
If you increased his size the ratio of his body length to highest jump would get smaller and eventually plateu. I think the cat’s with the best vertical leaps are leapords (no cite, correct me if I am wrong), and they are only in the 15 foot range, getting larger as cats from that point on doesn’t improve the distance of the leap (and eventually lowers it).
There are also some really cool anatomical design issues that help them be “springy.” For example, cats are “digitigrades” which means they walk on their toes instead of their entire foot as does a human.
I’m sure you’ve seen a cat be mildly startled go “boing” into the air without bendings its “knees” or a cat challenge you by bouncing at you and with an arched back on stiff legs – (I call it the “Pepe LePew bounce”) – this is essentially from a flick of the toes.
Ah, here is a link to a site about cat anatomy that explains some of the “springiness” of their design (such as a spine that is more loosely strung together, the absence of a collar bone, and big, honkin’ thighs – they’re jumpers these beasts). You can click on the “skeleton” link for more basic info.
The site’s not very thorough at all and give just an overview, but the sites with greater detail seem to all have photos of real cats being dissected rather than diagrams and that is too horrific for me, I’m afraid, so I could not surf them to find better details.
Only in cases where a muscle is bringing a limb closer to the body. The only instances I can think of on a human are the biceps and hamstrings.
As far as strength goes, the number of fibers you have and their size are far less important than how many of them you can use at once. People who train for strength are aiming for adaptations in their CNS, not their muscles.
Only in cases where a muscle is bringing a limb closer to the body. The only instances I can think of on a human are the biceps and hamstrings.
As far as strength goes, the number of fibers you have and their size are far less important than how many of them you can use at once. People who train for strength are aiming for adaptations in their CNS, not their muscles.
One of my cats is so big I’ve been accused of Photoshopping him. Tybalt weighs 25 pounds, and while he looks like a big tub of lard, there’s some serious muscles under that flab. Our front door has one of them little windows at face-height instead of a peephole, and Tyb could jump right out through it if I let him.
Tybalt’s mother Caliban has a kink in her spine that makes her back kinda stiff; she’s compensated for this by honing her leaping skills even more. She may have trouble maneuvering in tight spaces, but when she leaps she flies.
It’s prolly just the way cats have evolved as pounce-fu hunters.
If human beings had finger and toe nails that were like a set of steak knives, I’d imagine you’d need about 15 people to hold a recalcitrant shot recipient down so that:
he or she is immobilized enough to safely inject; and,
[aside]
It should perhaps be noted, however, that a digitigrade stance is not so much an adaptation for “springiness” as it is for cursoriality (running). It effectively increases the animal’s stride length, allowing for greater overall speed. The ungulates take this stride-lengthening approach the extreme with their “unguligrade” stance, wherein they stand on their tippy-toes.
[/aside]
My Buffy is small and lean-she weighs about 8 pounds, but she’s probably the strongest cat we have, because she’s so freaking ACTIVE. I have never seen a cat as active as Buffy, and she may not weigh much, but that cat has major muscle.
Depending on how he’s built-you said he’s long and lean. Well, there you go. Fluffy, my old cat, was huge, but she used to jump on the fridge in her prime, and higher too.
Does your cat have a sort of “flap” on his belly? Buffy’s sister Gypsy has one, as did Fluffy. This enables some cats to make themselves a bit longer, in a way, for jumping. Cats are excellent acrobats.
