Cat Wearing Helmet for Bike Ride Melts Hearts Online

A video of a cat wearing a tiny helmet while being taken on a bike ride has gone viral on TikTok, where it has received 3.2 million views.

The clip, shared by the TikTok account @heyitsgingerandpepper, was posted with a caption that reads: "Her favourite activity [a person cycling emoji]." The clip has not been independently verified by Newsweek.

As adorable as the cat may be, felines don't really need a helmet in case they fall, because they always manage to land on their feet.

The physics behind this phenomenon, known as "cat-turning" or the "cat-righting reflex," has been studied for centuries. The first research paper about it was published in 1700 by the French scientist Antoine Parent, according to Gregory Gbur, author of Falling Felines and Fundamental Physics. He is also a professor in the Department of Physics and Optical Science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

"For context, Isaac Newton was still alive at the time and his groundbreaking physics work Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica was only 13 years old," said Gbur in a February 2020 article for BBC Science Focus magazine.

Gbur said several theories attempt to explain what's going on when a cat is falling and the physical mechanisms involved. The most important aspect is "a bend and twist motion," he told the website Ars Technica in December 2019. "The cat bends at the waist and counter rotates the upper and lower halves of its body in order to cancel those motions out."

Depending on how heavy or light—or how long or short—a cat is, "each of them may twist and bend and tuck and turn just a little bit differently," Gbur said.

He continued: "If you watch videos of falling cats, you will see that a lot of them use their tails to turn over. But we also know that cats without tails can turn over just fine. So from a physics point of view, the problem has reached a level where the details depend on the specific cat."

The TikTok video began by showing a cat laying on a couch and looking up. A message overlaid on the screen read: "Wanna go for a bike ride?" A woman who appears on the screen replies, "OK."

The clip then showed the cat wearing a bike helmet-like hat on its head, as a message on the screen said: "I have a helmet."

When the woman asked "What about me?," the video showed the cat with its paws over a large human bike helmet as a message on the screen read: "Got one for u too."

The video later showed the woman wearing the helmet and riding a bike along a street, with the cat, wearing its helmet, seated in a small basket at the bike's front.

The cat has melted the hearts of TikTokers. In a comment that got over 15,000 likes, Swoosh and the City pointed out "the little helmet." User Melon and Finn simply wrote: "THE HELMET [sad face crying floods of tears emojis]," in a comment that got 6,971 likes.

User ateinei12 wrote, "She's so cute with the helmet" in a comment that got 8,144 likes, while RxN said, "The cutest thing ever!!" in a comment that received over 4,172.

Newsweek has contacted the original poster for comment.