Those silly humans seemed surprised a few months ago when Tatiana, a 350-pound Siberian tiger in the San Francisco Zoo, escaped from her enclosure by leaping over a 12.5 foot fence some 33 feet away. They didn't think this should be possible. That's because, unlike cats, humans are very bad at math. Perhaps they should spend more time scanning arXiv. They might have stumbled upon a useful paper by one Raza Syed: "Tiger Tales: A Critical Examination of the Tiger's Enclosure at the San Francisco Zoo."
Syed used a simple 2D projectile motion model to find the minimum velocity a 350-pound tiger would need to clear such an obstacle. It's simple ballistics, really -- simple for a cat, anyway. Tatiana would need to reach a velocity of 26.7 MPH at an angle of 55 degrees. And she was highly motivated. (Rumor has it taunting may have been involved. But personally, who wouldn't want to escape such a boring existence?)
Syed claims to be a physicist at Northwestern University, but we suspect he had some feline help with this particular paper. One day, perhaps, kitty contributions to science will be fully recognized.
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