Amazing Cats: Bump Stops
Posted: Sat Oct 09, 2021 7:02 am
Have you ever wondered what that extra pad was doing a little way up your cat's front leg, opposite the dew claw?
You may have heard them referred to as "bump stops" and been told they are in case of skids and high jump landing. Dogs have them too. But are they really needed? How often, really, would this part of the leg ever touch the floor? If it's not needed, evolution will eventually let it die out. Bump stops are still very much here.
To understand why, look at your own hand. The pads immediately behind your fingers are equivalent to the cat's large pad. The four little pads are your fingers. The dew claw is your thumb, and this is the claw to watch for sign of overgrowth, or ingrowing. Not all cats manage to use this one when scratching and it can easily become a problem. If your cat will let you touch it, between the bump stop and the main pad the fur is supersoft and you can feel it "dishes" in and flexes slightly. You might even be able to feel that there are lots of very small bones running lengthways down this part of the leg. That is the palm of the hand. Now you can see that the ump stop pad is a development of the heel of the hand.
Which doesn't show the need for it. No - but a slow motion film of a cat landing from a modest height does, and here's one I found earlier:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xN12kR ... SlowMoGuys
It's horrible and fascinating all at once, isn't it?
You're welcome.
You may have heard them referred to as "bump stops" and been told they are in case of skids and high jump landing. Dogs have them too. But are they really needed? How often, really, would this part of the leg ever touch the floor? If it's not needed, evolution will eventually let it die out. Bump stops are still very much here.
To understand why, look at your own hand. The pads immediately behind your fingers are equivalent to the cat's large pad. The four little pads are your fingers. The dew claw is your thumb, and this is the claw to watch for sign of overgrowth, or ingrowing. Not all cats manage to use this one when scratching and it can easily become a problem. If your cat will let you touch it, between the bump stop and the main pad the fur is supersoft and you can feel it "dishes" in and flexes slightly. You might even be able to feel that there are lots of very small bones running lengthways down this part of the leg. That is the palm of the hand. Now you can see that the ump stop pad is a development of the heel of the hand.
Which doesn't show the need for it. No - but a slow motion film of a cat landing from a modest height does, and here's one I found earlier:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xN12kR ... SlowMoGuys
It's horrible and fascinating all at once, isn't it?
You're welcome.