"Catching  yourself" by extending your hands to protect your brain is an evolutionary instinct called protective extension. Leads to a lot of broken arms but a broken arm is better than a broken skull any day. Athletes that wear pads (skateboarders, football players, etc) have to kind of deprogram themselves from this instinct to some extent. I skated a lot in my youth and it's generally the wrong way to fall because nature didn't design us with pads. Hams don't have much of a brain to protect and additionally have beetused their way out of any natural instinct besides gorging on shit. And even the likelihood of serious injury isn't going to make blobs that size react quickly enough (recall the blob waddling away from an inferno sometime in the past week?)