Why cats always land on their feet?

If you had ever owned a cat then you would have definitely tried dropping it from a height and somehow it would always managed to land on its feet. Ever wondered why?

The cat righting reflex is a cat's innate ability to orient itself as it falls in order to land on its feet. Cats can pull it off so easily because they have very flexible backbone and no functional clavicle.

They are able to accomplish this with these key steps:

1. Bend in the middle so that the front half of their body rotates about a different axis from the rear half.
2. Tuck their front legs in to reduce the moment of inertia of the front half of their body and extend their rear legs to increase the moment of inertia of the rear half of their body so that they can rotate their front further (as much as 90°) while the rear half rotates in the opposite direction less (as little as 10°).
3. Extend their front legs and tuck their rear legs so that they can rotate their rear half further while their front half rotates in the opposite direction less.

And the minimum height at which they can execute this perfectly is 30 cm.

Don't own a cat? Cats are cool.. Adopt one. And you can experiment on it.  

Kidding. 

Source: Wikipedia.