Research overview: evolution of hypercarnivory and metabolic specialisation in felids

The feline commitment to meat is an evolutionary story, and this overview reviews how hypercarnivory and its metabolic specialisations arose in the cat lineage. As cats specialised on vertebrate prey, selection favoured efficient processing of protein and fat and relaxed the maintenance of pathways for synthesising nutrients abundant in meat, gradually producing the obligate carnivore physiology seen today. This trajectory is read from comparative biochemistry and phylogeny. Researchers reconstruct it across carnivorans. Why it matters: viewing obligate carnivory as the outcome of evolution clarifies why cats lost capacities that omnivores retain, framing each dietary dependence as a trade-off that paid off on a prey diet. It connects the molecular and metabolic peculiarities of cats to the deep history of the felid family and the ecological niche of the specialist predator.