🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

A cat's friendliness toward people is shaped by both genes and early experience, and this overview surveys research disentangling these influences. It covers classic studies showing that bold, friendl…

GPS and accelerometer studies of wild cheetahs have transformed understanding of how the fastest land animal actually hunts. This overview surveys findings that hunting success depends less on top spe…

Free-ranging domestic cats maintain home ranges whose size and overlap depend on sex, reproductive status, food distribution, and population density. This overview surveys tracking studies showing tha…

Predatory behaviour and predatory play in cats are only loosely coupled to hunger, a feature that has intrigued researchers. This overview surveys studies manipulating feeding state and prey-like stim…

Lion roars carry information not only about presence but potentially about the identity and competitive ability of the caller. This overview surveys research on the acoustic structure of roars, the ba…

Maintaining social relationships requires recognising specific individuals, and this overview surveys evidence that cats discriminate familiar from unfamiliar conspecifics. It covers the cues involved…

In pumas, infanticide by males that have newly established tenure is a significant source of kitten mortality, and it shapes female reproductive timing and space use. This overview surveys research fr…

Infanticide is a central force in lion social evolution, occurring when incoming males kill the cubs of their predecessors to accelerate females' return to breeding condition. This overview surveys re…

Understanding behaviour and cognition is central to safeguarding feline welfare, and this overview surveys how research translates into care. It covers welfare frameworks that incorporate the cat's ev…

Do cats hold expectations about how physical objects behave, such as that unsupported objects fall? This overview surveys experiments probing feline intuitive physics, including studies using rattling…

Building on early comparative work, a series of studies probed how far cats can track objects hidden by invisible displacement, where an object is concealed in a container that is then moved behind a…

Tigers maintain a land-tenure system in which resident adults hold largely exclusive territories advertised and defended through scent marks, scrapes, and vocalisations. This overview surveys radio-te…

Leopards are versatile solitary hunters whose success rests on stealth, ambush, and the ability to secure kills from kleptoparasites. This overview surveys studies of leopard hunting tactics across fo…

Unusually for a solitary felid, male cheetahs often form lifelong coalitions, frequently of brothers, that cooperate to hold small, high-quality territories. This overview surveys research on coalitio…

Tigress cubs depend on their mother for up to two years while acquiring the skills to hunt large prey alone. This overview surveys research on tiger maternal care, including den selection, the gradual…

Cheetah mothers raise cubs alone through a long, demanding dependency marked by extremely high cub mortality, especially from predation. This overview surveys research on cheetah maternal care, includ…

Classic developmental research showed that mother cats shape how their kittens come to treat prey, with kittens that observe their mother killing and eating prey more likely to become efficient predat…

Genetic studies of feral cat colonies have revealed promiscuous mating systems in which a single litter is frequently sired by several males. This overview surveys research using paternity analysis to…

The cat's hunting behaviour is organised as a sequence of partly independent modules: searching, stalking, chasing, pouncing, grabbing, killing, and consuming. This overview surveys research on how th…

Cat-human communication combines vocal, visual, and tactile channels, and research increasingly examines how these integrate. This overview surveys work on how cats coordinate meows, purrs, body postu…

Cats navigate complex home ranges and occasionally return home over surprising distances, prompting interest in their spatial abilities. This overview surveys research and historical experiments on fe…

Mother cats choose concealed, defensible nest sites and may relocate kittens repeatedly during the early weeks, carrying them by the scruff. This overview surveys research on maternal care, including…

Cats lose interest in a toy quickly but renew play when the object changes, a pattern that has been studied experimentally. This overview surveys research showing that habituation to a toy is reduced…

Object play in kittens, batting, grasping, and biting at small movable items, closely resembles components of the predatory sequence, prompting long debate over whether play functions as practice for…

Classic experiments established that kittens learn instrumental tasks faster by watching their mother than an unfamiliar adult or by trial and error alone. This overview surveys this body of work on m…

Although less commonly trained than dogs, cats learn readily through operant conditioning, and this overview surveys research and applied work on training them. It covers the use of positive reinforce…

Individual cats often favour one paw when reaching for food or stepping, and laterality research has linked this to underlying brain organisation and even temperament. This overview surveys studies me…

Reliable personality assessment helps match cats to homes and tailor care, and this overview surveys research developing and validating temperament tests for shelter and pet cats. It covers behavioura…

Consistent individual differences in cats extend to how they cope with stress, linking behaviour to physiology. This overview surveys research relating feline personality dimensions such as boldness a…

The cat-human relationship has measurable physiological dimensions, and this overview surveys research probing them. It covers studies of behavioural and hormonal responses, including investigations o…