Research overview: home range and the felid land-tenure system

Most big cats organize their use of space through a land-tenure system in which residents hold home ranges advertised by scent and maintained partly through avoidance. This overview synthesizes the general felid pattern: female ranges sized to meet the energetic demands of raising young and tracking prey, larger male ranges overlapping several females to secure mating access, and spacing maintained by marking, calls, and the timing of movement rather than constant patrol. It reviews how range size scales inversely with prey density and how the system underlies population structure and turnover. The synthesis frames land tenure as the spatial foundation of solitary cat societies, with lions the social exception. For enthusiasts it explains why male cat ranges encompass several female ranges, why prey-poor habitats demand vast territories, and how a shared spatial logic underlies the lives of cats across the world.