🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

An overview of how leopards coexist with dominant tigers in Asian forests by partitioning prey size, space and activity. Where tigers are abundant, leopards tend to take smaller prey, shift toward are…

A survey of how leopards, as widespread mid-to-large felids, suppress smaller carnivores through killing, kleptoparasitism and fear. Across Africa and Asia leopards kill and displace jackals, caracals…

A survey of how felids exploit the seasonal pulse of newborn ungulates, a period of high vulnerability that can dominate annual recruitment losses. During calving and fawning seasons, abundant, hidden…

An overview of how the scent of felid predators alone can suppress prey foraging, movement and reproduction, demonstrating nonconsumptive effects without any direct attack. Prey detect chemical cues o…

A survey of the minimum prey abundance large cats need to maintain viable populations and why prey depletion is a leading cause of felid decline. Because predator density scales with prey biomass, the…

An overview of the behavioral defenses ungulates and other prey deploy against felid predators, from vigilance scanning to alarm signaling and habitat avoidance. Because cats are stealthy ambush hunte…

A survey of how big cats process and consume their kills, and why handling time matters for kill-rate estimation and competition. Larger carcasses take longer to consume and force predators to remain…

An overview of how much carrion features in the diets of cats traditionally viewed as pure hunters. While felids are generally more reliant on fresh kills than canids or hyaenids, many will scavenge o…

An overview of the snow leopard's dependence on a few wild mountain ungulates, chiefly blue sheep (bharal) and Siberian ibex, across the high ranges of Central Asia. These prey constitute the core of…

A survey of how stable isotope ratios of carbon, nitrogen and other elements in tissues reconstruct the diets and trophic positions of cats. Because isotopic signatures of prey are passed to predators…

An overview of how ambush felids select hunting habitat to minimize the distance over which they must close on prey undetected. Because capture success drops sharply with the length of the final rush,…

An overview of documented cases in which cats kill more prey than they can eat, extending Kruuk's classic analysis to felids. Surplus killing in cats typically occurs when normal prey escape responses…

A survey of the leopard's distinctive habit of hauling kills, sometimes heavier than itself, into trees, and the ecological drivers behind it. Tree caching is most pronounced where lions and spotted h…

Kruuk documented and analyzed cases where carnivores kill far more prey than they can consume, challenging the assumption that predators only take what they need. Drawing on spotted hyena and other ca…

Kruuk, H. · Journal of Zoology · 1972

Schaller's monograph is the foundational field study of lion ecology and one of the most thorough predator-prey investigations ever conducted. Over years in the Serengeti, he documented lion social st…

Schaller, G.B. · University of Chicago Press · 1972

Periquet, Fritz and Revilla reviewed the full breadth of interactions between lions and spotted hyenas, the two dominant large carnivores of African savannas. They synthesized evidence on kleptoparasi…

Periquet, S., Fritz, H. & Revilla, E. · Biological Reviews · 2015

Estes and a large group of coauthors synthesized evidence that the loss of apex consumers, including big cats, is among humanity's most pervasive influences on nature. The review marshaled cases acros…

Estes, J.A., Terborgh, J., Brashares, J.S. et al. · Science · 2011