Nekos and surviving falls.

Since nekos are said to be able to run of all fours, I wondered if they would stand a better chance of surviving a big drop than a human would if it gimicked a cat in freefall?

It seems plausible to me, especially since nekos are supposed to be naturally more athletic than humans in general. I think that there'd still be a limit to how high they could fall from without suffering damage or fatality, though, and it might depend on the neko's weight, muscularity, and ability to not panic in such a situation.

A tall fall is still a tall fall. Just because you land on your hands and feet doesn't mean you're magically going to land after a fifty foot drop with less injury. It merely means you break your arms and legs first.

Cats don't "proportionally" fall several times their height. Well, more accurately, they do, but it's not putting their body under an excess stress. It's the same reason bugs can fall a few feet and don't messily explode.

Well, as humanoids they'd have to do more work, but I still think, like, two- to four-story falls wouldn't be too much to handle for them. With their muscles and reflexes, they could easily ease the impact by spreading their weight even across their body as they land, or something like that.

What cats got is a righting reflex. If they fall too much for their size, they'll know it just as much as we will.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_righting_reflex
Also, some studies have discovered that falling can hurt cats too.

I'd go with saying they got a righting reflex, guys, so that nekos are capable of some over-the-top pirouettes in midair that most humans would need leverage to accomplish- though, of course, a guy who knows how to take a fall, like, say, Jackie Chan, would be at less risk than a regular human being, specially if he were nimble like a cat.

Edit: For the record, Jackie Chan broke every bone in his body over the course of his career. Multiple times. In less than 40 years. Now he has a big metal plug on the back of his head to keep his skull from falling apart.

I like how at the bottom of the page is a link to the buttered cat paradox

DarkOne wrote:

Since nekos are said to be able to run of all fours, I wondered if they would stand a better chance of surviving a big drop than a human would if it gimicked a cat in freefall?

The bigger and heavier the harder the fall will be. Neko even if possess some cat's trait are bigger and heavier than cat, they are more prone to be as affected by a fall as humans but if you want good candidate to survive to a big drop choose a tiny.

This is one of those tricky area's that we tend to try and ignore in Felarya because of some issues many of the characters have. A giant tripping for example would brake every bone in their body.

Which is why I had thought of implementing some sort of "relative gravity" theory that states that individuals are affected by gravity differently depending on their size category.

It's not a matter to answer how the giant predator can exist or survive to higher fall. The ability of cat to survive to high fall is linked to its size. If you make a neko character survive to a fall that would kill a human we cannot say it's because of her cat's counterpart. It's not like having a nocturnal vision,retractable claw, enhanced smell, sense of balance and hearing or being more flexible. It's due to something else.

gwadahunter2222 wrote:

It's not a matter to answer how the giant predator can exist or survive to higher fall. The ability of cat to survive to high fall is linked to its size.

Exactly, and more specifically because a cat falling ten times its height (let's say that makes it a 10' fall) is almost literally the same pressure being put on a human for falling... twice its height.