🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

This landmark ethological treatise compiled decades of close observation into a comprehensive description of feline behaviour, with especially detailed analysis of the predatory sequence: the stalk, t…

Paul Leyhausen · 1979

When threatened, cats deploy a graded set of agonistic signals including growls, hisses, spits, and yowls, paired with visual displays such as piloerection, arched back, and ear and pupil changes. Thi…

Allonursing, the nursing of non-offspring, is best documented in lions but reported in other group-living or colonial felid contexts, including domestic cat colonies. This overview surveys research on…

Even as predators, cats must avoid being killed, and anti-predator behaviour shapes their activity and space use. This overview surveys research on vigilance, refuge use, and avoidance in domestic and…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Play is prominent in young big cats and persists in enriched captive settings, where it supports physical development and welfare. This overview surveys research on social and object play in lion, tig…

Solitary and group-living cats alike rely on a network of chemical signals to coordinate behaviour without constant contact. This overview surveys research on the feline scent-communication system, in…

Felids scratch trees and other surfaces and create ground scrapes that combine visual marks with scent from glands in the paws. This overview surveys research on the marking function of scratching acr…

Infanticide by males is documented or inferred across many felid species, from lions to tigers, leopards, pumas, and others, wherever killing dependent young can hasten a female's next conception. Thi…

Navigating and exploiting a home range requires cats to build and use spatial knowledge of their environment. This overview surveys research on how cats learn the layout of their territory, the locati…

Cats sometimes kill more prey than they consume, a phenomenon called surplus killing that appears when vulnerable prey is abundant and the killing response is repeatedly triggered. This overview surve…

In endangered cats, individual temperament can determine reproductive success and welfare in managed-care programs. This overview surveys research extending the cheetah findings to other species, exam…

Roughly two-thirds of domestic cats display a stereotyped response to catnip, sniffing, licking, rolling, and rubbing, triggered by the compound nepetalactone acting through the olfactory and vomerona…

Play is energetically costly and potentially risky, yet pervasive in young cats, prompting debate over its functions. This overview surveys the major hypotheses, including play as practice for predati…

The feline killing bite is precisely targeted to the nape, where the canines wedge between cervical vertebrae to sever or crush the spinal cord. This overview surveys research on how cats achieve this…

True tool use is essentially absent in cats, but felids display tool-adjacent behaviours that involve manipulating objects and environments to achieve goals. This overview surveys examples such as usi…

Spraying urine against vertical surfaces is a distinct marking behaviour, separate from elimination, used by cats of both sexes to deposit long-lasting chemical signals. This overview surveys research…