Research overview: locomotion and climbing ability in early cats

This overview reviews what the skeletons of the earliest cats, especially Proailurus and early Pseudaelurus-grade forms, reveal about their locomotion and likely habits. Features such as relatively long bodies, short limbs, flexible joints, and grasping feet suggest these animals were agile and scansorial, capable of moving through trees in much the way some living small cats and viverrid-like carnivores do. The survey examines how researchers infer arboreal or semi-arboreal behaviour from limb proportions, ankle and wrist anatomy, and claw structure, and how the early cats' apparent climbing ability fits a forest-dwelling ancestral ecology. It discusses how locomotor reconstructions of these basal felids inform our picture of the lifestyle from which the diverse terrestrial and cursorial later cats evolved.