🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Cooperative care trains animals through positive reinforcement to participate voluntarily in medical procedures, replacing the stress and risk of immobilisation. This overview surveys how big cats are…

Declawing of big cats, performed in some private and entertainment settings to reduce injury risk to handlers, removes the last bone of each toe and has lasting welfare consequences. This overview sur…

Comparative and within-institution studies have probed which enclosure features predict pacing in captive cats. This overview surveys evidence relating stereotypic pacing to enclosure size, complexity…

Beyond basic housing, enrichment can substantially improve shelter cat welfare and adoptability. This overview surveys interventions studied in shelters: hiding boxes and elevated perches, toys and pl…

A recurring pitfall in enrichment research is treating an animal's interaction with an item as proof of benefit, when use and welfare improvement are not the same. This overview surveys the methodolog…

Much pacing in captive big cats clusters in the period before scheduled feeding, suggesting that predictable meal times generate anticipatory arousal expressed as repetitive walking. This overview sur…

Early socialisation has lifelong effects on feline temperament, making the handling of shelter kittens during their sensitive period a high-stakes welfare and adoptability issue. This overview surveys…

Captive big cats often live well beyond their wild lifespans, so managing ageing animals has become a central welfare task. This overview surveys geriatric felid care: recognising and treating chronic…

Whether felid cubs are raised by their mothers or by humans has lasting effects on behaviour, social competence and welfare. This overview surveys the comparative evidence: hand-reared cats may show a…

The ability to hide and break line of sight is a core feline coping mechanism, and a recurring finding across both small wild cats and domestic cats is that providing refuges reduces stress hormones a…

Adoption is the welfare endpoint for most shelter cats, and research has examined what makes adopters choose a particular cat and how housing and behaviour shape those choices. This overview surveys s…

Hung carcasses and bungee-suspended food are used to encourage captive cats to pull, leap and feed in physically demanding, naturalistic ways. This overview surveys studies that pair such feeding enri…

Small, closed captive populations risk losing genetic diversity, raising the chance that deleterious recessive alleles pair up and reduce health, fertility and survival, a phenomenon known as inbreedi…

No single indicator captures welfare reliably, so the field has moved toward integrated assessment combining multiple lines of evidence. This overview surveys how comprehensive welfare evaluation for…

How long cats remain in a shelter strongly affects their welfare, and overcrowding beyond a facility's capacity for care worsens stress, disease and outcomes. This overview surveys the concept of capa…

How cats are picked up, restrained and interacted with strongly shapes their stress and the impression they make on adopters. This overview surveys research and guidelines on low-stress and gentle han…

Degenerative joint disease is extremely common in older cats, both domestic and exotic, yet often under-recognised because cats mask pain. This overview surveys how osteoarthritis is detected and mana…

Early-life experience profoundly shapes felid behaviour, and the routine hand-rearing and early maternal separation used in cub-petting and some breeding programs carry developmental risks. This overv…

Modern exhibit design aims to provide not just naturalistic appearance for visitors but genuine behavioural opportunity for animals. This overview surveys principles of felid exhibit design: complex,…

Feeding captive non-domestic cats well requires meeting obligate-carnivore requirements for taurine, arginine, vitamin A, arachidonic acid and appropriate calcium-to-phosphorus ratios, which whole pre…

Because cats rely heavily on smell for hunting, social communication and exploring their world, scent-based enrichment is a natural fit for felid welfare. This overview surveys studies adding novel od…

Stereotypic pacing is the signature abnormal behaviour of captive carnivores, and a leading explanation links it to thwarted ranging and unfulfilled appetitive, pre-consummatory motivation, the search…

A challenging finding for felid welfare management is that stereotypic pacing, once established, can persist even after enclosures are enriched or enlarged, becoming partly independent of its original…

Individual cats differ consistently in boldness, fearfulness, aggressiveness and sociability, and these stable traits affect welfare, breeding success and how animals respond to husbandry. This overvi…

Operant conditioning with positive reinforcement underpins modern husbandry training, allowing cats to cooperate in shifting, crating, weighing and medical procedures. This overview surveys the learni…

Play, especially object play that mimics hunting, is both an indicator and a contributor to good welfare in cats, and its absence can signal stress or poor environments. This overview surveys research…

How keepers interact with dangerous captive carnivores spans a spectrum from free contact, sharing space with the animal, to protected contact, where a barrier always separates human and cat. This ove…

Qualitative Behaviour Assessment asks trained observers to score the expressive demeanour of an animal, capturing emotional qualities such as relaxed, tense, content or frustrated that quantitative et…

Deciding when a chronically ill or aged big cat's welfare no longer justifies continued life is among the most difficult tasks in captive felid care. This overview surveys structured quality-of-life a…

Veterinary visits are a major source of acute stress for cats and a barrier to care, since fearful cats are harder to examine and owners may avoid appointments. This overview surveys the science and p…