Research overview: how GPS and biologging reshaped big-cat ecology

The advent of GPS collars and biologging sensors has revolutionized the study of big-cat movement, hunting, and energetics. This overview synthesizes how high-resolution location data revealed kill sites through movement clusters, exposed the true scale of snow leopard and Amur tiger ranges, and quantified how cats navigate human-dominated landscapes, while accelerometers and other sensors measure activity, hunting effort, and the energetic cost of the hunt. It reviews how these technologies replaced the coarse pictures available from earlier radio-tracking and direct observation, enabling detailed study of secretive, wide-ranging predators. The synthesis frames biologging as a transformative toolkit for felid ecology. For enthusiasts it explains how researchers now reconstruct a cat's hunts and journeys from streams of data, why our understanding of ranging and predation has sharpened dramatically, and how technology continues to open windows onto the hidden lives of big cats.