Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!husc6!mailrus!ames!decwrl!labrea!polya!ray
From: ray@polya.Stanford.EDU (Ray Baxter)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: Squirrel Questions
Message-ID: <4150@polya.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 28 Sep 88 23:44:01 GMT
References: <22811@mordor.s1.gov>
Reply-To: ray@polya.Stanford.EDU (Ray Baxter)
Distribution: na
Organization: Biological Sciences, Stanford University
Lines: 19

In article <22811@mordor.s1.gov> lip@s1-amid.UUCP (Loren Petrich) writes:
>	I once saw a squirrel jump with a drop of over six feet (onto
>a carpeted floor, I might add), and run off as if nothing had
>happened. Is such durability typical of small animals? If so, then it
>would be an outcome of the square-cube law, in which smaller animals
>have a larger drag force (~area~length^2) per unit mass
>(~volume~length^3).

   Six feet is not all that far; humans, chimps and large cats can all
handle it.  But I take your point, smaller animals, squirrels especially
seem especially graceful about it.  It think that adaptation is more
likely to be the cause of this grace than the proportion of drag to mass.
Consider the flights of a rat and a mountain lion.  I would be willing to
bet that the mountain lion would appear considerably more graceful, in
spite being more than 10 times longer.

   By the way, if the square cube law were to be involved, it would
more probably be the cross-sectional area of the animals bones, and
not the drag, which was the relevant measure in a fall of six feet.