🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Some cats endure cold climates, and this overview reviews how they tolerate low temperatures. Cold-climate cats rely on dense, insulating fur, including seasonal thickening, on conserving core heat th…

Cats and dogs differ in how they handle water, and this overview reviews the comparison and its roots in feline biology. Cats, descended from desert-adapted ancestors, tend to have a lower thirst driv…

The sabertooth body plan evolved repeatedly in unrelated lineages, and this overview reviews this striking convergence and what it reveals. True cats produced sabertooths such as Smilodon and Homother…

Before springing, a cat crouches and gathers itself, and this overview reviews the role of this countermovement in jump performance. The preparatory crouch loads the hindlimb muscles and tendons and a…

Declawing, or onychectomy, removes not just the claw but the terminal toe bone, and this overview surveys its biomechanical and welfare consequences. Because the claw grows from that bone, eliminating…

The domestic cat traces to a desert-adapted wild ancestor, and this overview reviews how that heritage shapes its water physiology today. Descended from the African wildcat of arid regions, domestic c…

A cat digestive tract reflects its meat diet, and this overview reviews how carnivore gut anatomy suits processing animal tissue. Cats have a relatively short, simple intestine compared with herbivore…

Cats walk on their toes, a digitigrade posture that lengthens the effective limb and changes the geometry of force transmission. This overview reviews how toe-walking affects stride length, speed pote…

Sabertoothed cats are often divided into dirk-toothed forms with long, narrow canines and scimitar-toothed forms with shorter, broader, serrated canines, and this overview reviews the functional and e…

Recent research suggests some mammals, possibly including cats, transmit ultraviolet light to the retina, and this overview reviews the evidence and its uncertainty for felids. Studies of ocular media…

A long-standing hypothesis held that cheetahs abandon chases because sprinting overheats them, storing heat faster than they can lose it. This overview examines the evidence, including studies that im…

How cats drink became a notable physics question, and this overview reviews the mechanics of feline lapping and its place in water balance. Research showed that cats lap by darting the tongue tip onto…

Elastic tendons can store and return energy like springs, reducing the muscular cost of each stride. This overview reviews evidence for and against substantial elastic energy storage in the cheetah hi…

Cooling and water conservation can conflict, and this overview reviews how desert cats navigate evaporative water loss. Cats cool partly by evaporation, through panting and through saliva spread by gr…

Vocal abilities are distributed across the felid family tree in informative ways, and this overview reviews the evolution of cat vocal anatomy. Mapping hyoid structure and laryngeal features onto feli…

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,…

Protrusible, sheathed claws are a hallmark of the cat family and a few relatives, and this overview reviews their evolutionary origin and significance. The mechanism likely co-evolved with the felid s…

Sabertoothed cats vanished in the late Pleistocene alongside much of the large-mammal fauna, and this overview reviews hypotheses for their extinction and its significance. Proposed drivers include th…

The colour of cat eyeshine varies, and this overview reviews how tapetal structure and composition produce different reflected hues across individuals and species. The layered, crystalline tapetum act…

Cats move through a sequence of gaits as speed rises, from a walk to a trot, then to bounding and galloping forms. This overview describes the footfall patterns, duty factors, and energetic and stabil…

Cats are not colour-blind, but they see colour differently from humans, and this overview reviews the evidence for feline dichromacy. With two main cone types, cats are thought to perceive a more limi…

Body temperature is actively defended around a set point, and this overview reviews how cats regulate temperature during illness and fever. When fighting infection, the body can raise its thermoregula…

Finite-element analysis models a skull as a mesh of elements and predicts how stresses distribute under loads, and this overview surveys its application to cat crania. By simulating canine bites, stru…

Sabertooths such as Smilodon had exceptionally muscular, robust forelimbs, and this overview reviews their inferred role in subduing prey before the bite. Strong, heavily built front limbs would let t…

A cat keeps its coat functional through maintenance, and this overview reviews waterproofing and coat care. Sebaceous glands coat the hairs with oils that help repel water and keep the fur in conditio…

Sabertoothed cats needed extraordinary jaw gapes to bring their long canines to bear, and this overview reviews how their jaw mechanics achieved this. Estimates place maximum gape far beyond that of a…

Grooming serves a thermoregulatory function, and this overview reviews how spreading saliva helps cats shed heat. When warm, cats may groom more, depositing saliva on the fur that then evaporates and…

Even strict carnivores host gut microbes, and this overview reviews what is known about the feline gut microbiome and its role in a meat diet. The cat intestinal microbial community is adapted to a hi…

The margay, a small Neotropical cat, can descend trees head-first, a rare ability among cats enabled by unusually mobile ankle joints that rotate the hindfeet outward to grip behind the animal. This o…

Many white cats, especially blue-eyed ones, are deaf, and this overview reviews the link between coat colour genetics and hearing. The dominant white gene can disrupt the development of pigment cells…