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No one on the internet can figure out if this cat is going up or down these stairs
No one on the internet can figure out if this cat is going up or down these stairs
Megan WillettApr 9, 2015, 22:35 IST
Coming off the heels of the world's most famous dress, a post on 9Gag of a cat walking on a set of stairs is going viral. Spotted on The Daily Mail, the 9Gag post asks readers if the cat is walking up or down the stairs. At the time of this post, almost 4,000 comments have been made arguing about the image. "Down because generally the wood would be flat on the horizontal portion of the stairs and the stone is on the back/vertical portion of the stairs," said one commenter."It's clearly up, you just have to imagine the camera in a different angle," said another.The picture shows a cat with its paw out and tail up on a set of stairs. Depending on your perspective, you can either see the cat going down with the light coming from the ceiling, or up with the light coming from the downstairs floor.Arguments for up include the pebbled texture of the stairs and what looks like a stair lip would only be seen from an upward perspective (with the cat descending towards the viewer.)The light would then be coming from the ceiling.An argument for down, however, insists that the stairs could be mosaic tile with a wooden lip, and the bright patch in the upper center of the image is light from downstairs.While many of the comments are hung up on the appearance of the stairs, there are some people who are wrapped up in the biology of the cat's posture, insisting that this is exactly how a cat would look if they were going either up or down the stairs, depending on the argument."The cat is going up, the tail is used to balance the body of the cat and in this case the tail is elevated upwards so that when the cat uses its rear legs to push up it pushes parallel to the line on which gravity is working on the tail to stabilize itself," said one commenter."Look at the cat's tail - it's facing upwards, or the opposite of the direction it's moving in. If the cat were to go up the stairs, it's tail would point downwards," said another.What do you think? Depending on who you ask, it could be either.
