It’s been well studied that cats have an innate ability to orient themselves in order to land on their feet after falling. They do this by rotating different parts of their body in different directions. Evolutionary biologist Robert Dudley of the University of California, Berkeley says they developed this reflex because they originally lived in trees.

"It turns out that most things that live in trees – remember, small cats are ancestrally arboreal. They are tree dwellers. So think of a leopard or any of the small tropical cats. They are running and chasing after prey all the time in shrubs and trees. Even foxes in California, the native fox is actually – can climb trees. I mean, there are lots of things that go into the trees to get away from predators that chase things down or sleep up there or whatever. So things that are living in trees tend to have a very well developed aerial righting reflex so as to stay in the canopy if you’re falling. And so, these are evolutionary adaptations that reflect in part the ancestry of the particular animal but also the particular ecological context that it’s evolved within."