For the source text click/tap here: Chullin 51
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On our daf the Gemara quotes Rav Huna as teaching that if an animal was left on the roof and was later found on the ground, we do not assume that it fell and the ruling of the Mishnah is not applied to it. To illustrate and clarify this ruling, the Gemara relates the following story:
A goat belonging to Ravina was on the roof and through the sky-light saw some peeled barley below. It jumped and fell down from the roof to the ground. Ravina came before Rav Ashi and asked: Was the reason for Rav Huna’s statement, ‘If a person left an animal on the roof, and returned and found it on the ground we do not apprehend a lesion of the internal organs,’ that it had something to hold on, but in this case it had nothing to hold on; or was it that the animal estimated the distance, so that here too it estimated the distance? — He replied. The reason was that it estimated the distance; so that here too it estimated the distance and it is therefore permitted.
We explore the world of falling animals in antiquity and the recent cures for spinal cord injury.