🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Kittens are altricial and pass through a rapid, well-characterised sequence of behavioural milestones. This overview surveys research on kitten development, from the early reliance on thermal and olfa…

Comparing the domestic cat with its wild ancestor illuminates how domestication has reshaped behaviour. This overview surveys research contrasting African and European wildcats with domestic cats in t…

The quality of the cat-human relationship depends on both the cat's and the owner's characteristics, and this overview surveys research linking feline personality to relationship outcomes. It covers h…

Beyond the mechanics of the flehmen response, felids use vomeronasal sampling to extract social information from scent marks. This overview surveys research on how cats assess reproductive status, ind…

Older cats can develop cognitive dysfunction syndrome, a decline analogous in some respects to human dementia. This overview surveys research on age-related changes in feline cognition and behaviour,…

The cognitive bias paradigm tests whether an animal in a negative affective state judges ambiguous cues more pessimistically, providing a window into emotion. This overview surveys research applying j…

Snow leopards inhabit vast, rugged ranges where direct contact is rare, making indirect communication essential. This overview surveys research on snow leopard signalling, including scrape marks, scen…

Cognition has been studied far less in cats than in primates, birds, or dogs, but a coherent picture is emerging across the felid family. This overview synthesises research on object permanence, spati…

Felid species differ in their vocal repertoires, and comparative bioacoustics has sought to map these differences onto phylogeny and ecology. This overview surveys work cataloguing call types across s…

Several studies have tested how well cats exploit human-given cues, such as pointing, gazing, or tapping, to find hidden food in object-choice tasks. This overview surveys the range of cues cats can a…

Cheetah mothers and cubs use distinctive vocal contact to maintain cohesion as they move across open landscapes. This overview surveys research on the bird-like chirp and other calls that reunite sepa…

Cooperation is rare among felids, concentrated in the social lion and in cheetah and feral-cat male coalitions, making the family a useful contrast for theories of cooperation. This overview surveys r…

Lions are the most cooperative felid hunters, and research on Etosha and Serengeti prides has examined whether they coordinate roles during group hunts. This overview surveys evidence that some liones…

Lion cub survival is shaped by the communal creche, in which synchronously breeding females pool and defend their young. This overview surveys research on how creche formation buffers cubs against sta…

The same species that lives solitarily where prey is scarce forms dense colonies where food concentrates, and this flexibility makes the cat a model for density-dependent sociality. This overview surv…

Cheetah mothers bring live prey to their cubs and release it, apparently providing opportunities to practise capturing and killing. This overview surveys field research on how cubs develop hunting com…

Captive big cats have become subjects of cognitive testing that reveals their learning abilities and informs enrichment. This overview surveys research using touchscreen and apparatus-based discrimina…

Rough play among cats can resemble fighting, and distinguishing genuine play from aggression is important for welfare and household harmony. This overview surveys research on the behavioural markers t…

Beyond learning from other cats, researchers have asked whether cats can copy or learn from human demonstrators. This overview surveys exploratory studies, including reports that cats can be trained t…

Whether cats form dominance hierarchies has long been debated, since their social structure differs from the linear hierarchies of many group-living mammals. This overview surveys research on agonisti…

Elimination behaviour, including digging, covering, and substrate choice, has both innate and learned components and is a frequent source of household problems when disrupted. This overview surveys re…

Whether cats catch or respond to the emotions of others is an active research question. This overview surveys studies examining whether cats are affected by their owners' emotional states, respond to…

Cats are sensitive to environmental change, and chronic stress manifests in altered behaviour, from hiding and reduced activity to elimination problems and stress-related illness. This overview survey…

Cats are notoriously stoic, but research has shown that subtle facial changes carry information about pain and emotional state. This overview surveys the development of feline grimace scales that scor…

Anecdotes describe cats approaching distressed owners, and researchers have begun testing whether cats respond differentially to human emotional signals such as crying. This overview surveys explorato…

Long-term studies of urban feral cat colonies, including well-known work in Rome, document stable groups built around related females and their offspring, with males ranging more widely and showing lo…

Although a pride is a stable social unit, its members are rarely all together; lions move in subgroups that split and merge in a fission-fusion pattern. This overview surveys research on how pride mem…

The flehmen response, in which a cat draws back its lips, opens its mouth, and appears to grimace, delivers chemical signals to the vomeronasal organ in the roof of the mouth for processing of non-vol…

Whether companion animals understand human communicative gestures bears on how domestication reshapes cognition. This overview surveys research on cats' ability to use human pointing to locate hidden…

The lion's roar carries for kilometres and serves multiple social functions, from advertising territory ownership to locating and coordinating with pride mates. This overview surveys research on roari…