I always thought Russians were the world’s greatest cat lovers—until I saw this video.
Reader Stephen Q. Muth, better known as Butter’s Staff, sends this intriguing video of a cat (and two mice, barely visible) subjected to zero gravity on one of those airplane rides where, as a plane goes over the top of a parabolic arc, the centrifugal force cancels out gravity and one feels weightless—for about 25 seconds. That’s how they train astronauts to see what weightlessness feels like. (See here for more information).
Here an innocent kitty, named Porculpa, has the experience. I don’t think she liked it, despite the mice. Imagine an animal suddenly experiencing weightlessness for the first time. What would a cat do when turned upside down and released?
The explanation for the whole sordid affair is on Vimeo:
Porculpa is the name of a female Russian cat that I took into zero gravity onboard a parabolic aeroplane in 2008. It also means ‘Your Fault’ in Latin.
The plane left from the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center at Star City in Moscow and flew over Azerbaijan. I filmed Porculpa as she adapted to the conditions over 10 parabolas. Each parabola of the IL-76 aeroplane gives roughly 23 seconds of weightlessness. Inside the red container that you see are two mice which were meant to be released at the same time but the Russian Space Agency stipulated that they could not risk the mice getting loose and chewing wires. Both Porculpa and the mice were inside of a specially designed tent (Designer: Nick Joyce/Enigma FX) which was made from ripstack material with crash mats underneath to minimise risk. The height of the protective tent was 6’5”.
After initially considering a hummingbird to see how its flight instinct in weightlessness would be affected, and also discovering that many animals have been tested in isolation but not in relationships to one another, I decided to use a cat and mouse to frame predator prey behaviour in a zero gravity setting.
You cannot rehearse for this environment and research is no real preparation. I chose microgravity flight and animals to create a situation where I had to create a performance in which instinct is the script. In the full footage of ten parabolas, what you do see is the cat begin to adapt to the conditions and display agility and prowess in landing. It uses the container with the mice in to grab onto and turns it around. Its lack of sentience is the deciding factor in the performance.
Did they expect the cat to kill the mice in zero-G conditions? That’s a sick experiment. Fortunately, they weren’t allowed to try it. Note that comments are disabled on the video!
Whoops, I just found a video answer to my questions about cats dropped upside down, and what they do under zero-gravity. Here’s the answer, which doesn’t involve stupid predation experiments:
I have no doubt that the cat experienced absolute terror during this experiment. A terrible thing to do.
Yup. All I could think of is WHAT the hell did they think they could learn from terrorizing that poor kitteh. (12 times, I think)
There’s actually a 40-minute long video, which I recommend not looking up. Suffice to say the Russians didn’t properly control for bathroom breaks, and the zero-g result is at times like something out of an Aristocrats joke. Jerks.
Hmmm, cat juggling – with a relatively thin layer of armour for the jugglers.
While definitely confused, the cat’s don’t seem particularly distressed by the experience. (The first video doesn’t work for some reason – probably banned software or network protocols.) One is doing the rotating tail thing that they use to right themselves while falling, and looking very confused when it doesn’t work. Or maybe the lack of acceleration is what is confusing.
It does very much beg the question of what an agile predator would do in milli- or micro-gravity on a long-term basis. We may live to find out. (Though the experience of cats on ships would suggest that the Sparks would be extremely un-keen on having cats in space. Until the mice-in-space problem cries out for a solution.)
What one doesn’t see in the first edits is the repeated up and down… Porculpa crying as the g’s (and noise) goes up as they come out of the parabola and climb again. There is no soundtrack for obvious reasons. Worse, there’s nothing to grab onto – and no handler in there, just cameras poking into a bag that’s set up inside cushioned enclosure. I bet the cat had never heard an airplane engine until that day.
That doesn’t sound so [… words? …] innocuous.
Give the cats something to grip on to and a bit of time to adapt and I imagine they’d do much better than humans in weightlessness. That’s trebly so for kittens.
But I don’t see much point to these experiments, where the cats are left scrabbling without even the physical possibility of controlling their own motions, plus not enough time to learn how to adapt.
b&
How horrible. What a disgusting thing to do to an innocent animal.
How horrible. What a disgusting thing to do to an innocent animal.
I don’t care what they say, i saw a scared cat.
See NASA’s take on having fun with cats:
OMG! That looks even worse.
Damn, they are even snickering. Ceiling cat should issue a catwa against zego G cat experiments.
Poor kittehs! Such a 50s newscaster voice in the first video.
SF writer Andre (Alice) Norton suggested that cats would adapt to life aboard spacecraft readily. In many of her space operas, cats figured prominently as mascots (and alien vermin patrollers) aboard starships.
Eyes wide, pupils wide, legs spread with claws out. These cats only understand they are falling and falling. This has to be scary for them.
There are several videos of animals at 0 G, if anyone is curious.
Yes, the blown pupils is a giveaway that the cat is terrified.
Anybody who has ever owned a cat knows that cats can lose all interest in food when they are feeling stressed, unwell, or frightened. Getting a cat to eat under those circumstances can be incredibly challenging.
Since this a science website as well as a cat website, I hope I might be excused for pedantically refuting the “centrifugal force” explanation of weightlessness. After all, one gets the same sense of weightlessness from free-fall carnival rides that involve no circular motion and no centrifugal force.
What’s really going on here is that the plane simply follows the same sort of ballistic trajectory that any unpowered projectile (such as a cannonball) would follow, falling freely under the influence of gravity, and therefore weightless. It’s only when resisting gravity (as when the plane pulls out of the dive) that one feels weight.
Ha, you beat my comment below by a minute.
The “centrifugal force” explanation isn’t wrong, just idiosyncratic in this context. We may describe the inertial frame of the parabolic trajectory just fine with polar coordinates. At every point on the curve, the radial component of the force of gravity is exactly opposite to the fictitious force; the forces cancel and the cat floats. It’s not an invalid approach, just more complex.
I’m with Greg and Sidd, I also don’t think getting the centrifugal forces involved is necessary.
Thanks for explaining, you both.
Surely someone will complain about “centrifugal” here, so I might as well be the first. It’s more that the cat is in free fall, following a parabolic arc as if it were shot out of a cannon. I suppose one could work out the inertial frame of a parabolic arc and its associated (fictitious) forces, but it would be quite complex and it’s not really what people mean by centrifugal force.
Would there even be a point to doing this with hummingbirds? The aircraft doesn’t counteract Earth’s gravitational attraction. It seems like the only thing it would be testing is whether the hummingbird hovering in the air would avoid the aircraft falling around it. Or am I mistaken?
Hummingbirds might be less interesting. Now, putting a flightless bird into a vomit comet might test the hypothesis of whether they can ‘learn’ to fly. ‘Cept I would not want to frighten them.
The air inside the aircraft is falling along with the aircraft. So any bird hovering in that falling air would also be falling, and therefore weightless. Same goes for everything else inside the aircraft.
It’s when flying level at constant altitude (or parked on the tarmac) that the plane counteracts Earth’s gravity by preventing the things inside it from falling freely, and that’s when the passengers feel weight.
Porculpa isn’t Latin for your fault. Maybe there is an error in transliteration from Cyrillic.
Speaking of Russian animals in space, I ordered the Russian postage stamp commemorating the 50 years since Belka and Strelka went to space.
As for this cat, I could tell them how the cat would feel, because it is the same as I would feel!
On a long trip to mars, I would think pets would be very welcome by the human crew. This experiment shows that there is work to be done to make the trip pleasant for all on board. A set of cat-friendly positive grip surfaces might do the trick. At least until they were fully adapted.
Oh, that’s trivial. Any sort of fabric upholstery would do the trick as far as the cat is concerned; you’d just need to make sure it’s durable enough that the cat doesn’t wind up shredding it in a manner that creates excessive floating debris. Then again, the cat’s going to be shedding enough anyway (especially at least until the stress of unfamiliarity passes) to clog the air filters….
Or, in other words: by the time we’ve figured out space travel well enough to contemplate bringing cats along with us, we’ll also have advanced the equipment to the point that it’s not a concern. Assuming, of course, we ever make it to that point…an assumption that peak cheap oil makes quite dicey….
b&
Kittehs saying oh, boy! Rooms upholstered on all surfaces. Where to begin, where to begin…
Typo ergo sum Merilee
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I imagine a cat in a low-G environment (like the Moon, maybe Mars) in an oversized upholstered cat-friendly jungle gym would think it the ultimate playground. But it still might long for critters to stalk in the grass and a nice sunny and safe spot to nap in….
b&
I suspect a zero-gee litter box would be a significant technical challenge.
On the other hand, for a human mission to Mars, where astronauts need to be fit to walk around and set up equipment and such on arrival, zero-gee is the wrong way to go. What you want to do is separate the crew cabin from the drive module and spin them around each other on a tether for centrifugal gravity.
If someone wants to see what cats think of freefall when they are not panicked they need to take the cat on several flights while cuddling the cat. Then hold the cat only enough that it doesn’t drift off. Several flights later let the cat do whatever the cat wants. But enabling the cat to deal with the weirdness of freefall in a non-panicked state is crucial if the experiment is to have any value.
I’d like to imagine that, after acclimating him to commercial air travel, Baihu would be relatively okay if he started on my shoulders and was permitted to stay there until he decided to go exploring on his own.
Anybody who wants to sponsor us for such a study, feel free to contact me. But, be warned: it’s going to take lots of time, some of it very expensive. I understand seats on the Vomit Comet don’t come cheap….
b&
Yeah, seems not only cruel but stupid- no way to get any information out of that.
That being said, I’d imagine cats would adjust to zero-g, probably much better than humans would.
And if we ever get to the point where there are permanent habitats in space, I’d bet there will be mice and rats- they’ve followed us everywhere so far- so space kitties might be necessary.
Besides who wants to boldly go without taking cats along?
And they will become this! 🙂
Porculpa? Por culpa de quién este gato sufrió tanto? That’s what I want to know.
The thing is, I’m pretty sure if you put an untrained average Joe human in that situation without telling him/her what’s going to happen, they’ll freak out too. Why should animals have evolved the ability to cope in zero G anyways?
I was sickened by this. The poor cat is clearly terrified.
I’m a bit surprised no one is commenting about where the description says that cats aren’t sentient. That seems like the most worrying part of the whole affair, that these people see non-human animals as essentially robots. That view of cats is reinforced by them thinking that a cat in a completely strange environment over 25 seconds is going to want to chase mice.