The Cat With A Head For Heights

Cat does not have a fear of heights

This amazing video proves that, unlike humans, cats don’t suffer from a fear of heights (acrophobia). If you do and you have watched the video, you might find that it induced vertigo! It is a terrifying video in some ways. The cat is as calm as you like. Not a care in the world. It looks as though she is around 1,000 feet up or more. She’s appears to be perched on a small uplighter.

Access to it from the balcony, from which jumped down, does not look that easy. How she arrived at her precarious perch is a bit of a mystery. If she had to jump down onto it…Wow. How will she get back? The video maker appears to be the flat-dweller. What was she/he thinking while she made the video?

It looks as though the building is somewhere in Asia but that’s a wild guess. It seems to me that a fear of heights is a human condition. It is an interesting thought. Do you think it is exclusively a human condition? It might be. I’d suggest that cats don’t fear heights partly because they are so sure footed when climbing and jumping although there are some amusing ‘fails’ on YouTube. Also they have a history of being semi-arboreal. They are tree climbers. Some wild cats such as the margay live in trees. The Near Eastern wildcat (the domestic cat’s ancestor) does not live in trees but it is a very good climber.

The reason for a fear of heights is probably a bad experience when young. It seems feasible that a domestic cat could suffer from a fear of heights but we will never know. I recently did a page about Swiss cat ladders. All of them would be redundant but for the fact that domestic cats are very relaxed about heights.

Cats do fall though. They get it wrong sometimes.

Acrophobia has Greek origins. It comes from the Greek word for heights, which is “acron,” and the Greek word for fear, which is “phobos”.

Comments

The Cat With A Head For Heights — 6 Comments

Rudolph Furtado on February 20, 2019 at 12:18 am said:
I thought my now 9 year Tomcat ” Matata ” was the rare daredevil cat with a regular habit of climbing onto my kitchen window ledge and staring 5 floors below.This cat in the photo is unbelievable for its sheer beauty and portrayal of cat tendency to admire the World from heights. Picture of cats has a video of my cat ” Matata ” on the house window ledge. Till today he hasn’t slipped and fallen 5 floors below.
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Frances A Danna on February 19, 2019 at 11:18 pm said:
I have a fear response to heights. I started to feel dizzy and nauseated and ill way before the nine seconds were through. 🤢 I wonder though, are all cats “immune” to heights? Do cats classifed as “bush dwellers” actually feel nervous when it comes to heights also? 🤔
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- Michael Broad on February 20, 2019 at 11:31 am said:
  Yes, I have developed a fear of heights now I am old! I really do have a problem nowadays.
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- Michael Broad on August 14, 2020 at 4:05 pm said:
  I have a fear of heights nowadays but never did when I was young. We don’t know if all cats are immune to a fear of heights but it is likely. My belief is that all cats, wild or domestic car pretty well fearless when it comes to heights. However, they do get stuck up trees but I don’t think this is due to fear but an inability to navigate down as they can’t grip. They have to go in reverse and some cats find that hard.
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Irish Cornaire on February 19, 2019 at 3:42 pm said:
This moggie is considered a ‘Tree Dweller’ of which out of my 12 moggies 5 are tree dwellers then ye have ye bush dwellers,those that prefer to hide in bushes,indoor play cat houses.
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Albert Schepis on February 19, 2019 at 12:04 pm said:
I can barely look at the photo… I think cats have a respect for height; they know what it is, but their enjoyment of it seems to outweigh any fear. I mean look at that cat! Human babies are born with a fear of heights, even a couple of feet. I think with cats, when they get up past a certain height it’s all the same as far as risk, but it is a better view. They’re very visual.
One of my cats got stuck up on a neighbor’s roof once and he did have a hard time getting down because he was afraid. The best I could do was put a long plank against the house with carpeting wrapped around it. It was the middle of the night and my neighbor wasn’t cooperative. As for the cat in the photo, I think one would have to be very careful trying to help him, if he needed it. Usually when people try to help a cat in a tough situation, they don’t see it that way and it doesn’t go well. Ideally I would extend a pole with a net beneath him, and put a thick heavy berber carpeting off the balcony that he could get his claws into. Animal control would probably use their ketch-all pole.
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