🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

An overview of the extreme anatomical and physiological specializations that make the cheetah the fastest land predator and how they shape its predation ecology. Adaptations including a flexible spine…

An overview of how a warming climate may disrupt the snowshoe hare cycle and the lynx that depend on it. Changes in snow cover threaten the seasonal camouflage of hares, potentially increasing their p…

An overview of the long-running question of whether cougar predation adds to or merely substitutes for other deer mortality. If predation is compensatory, cats mainly take individuals that would have…

An overview of how social and grouping behavior in cats functions partly to defend kills against kleptoparasites and scavengers. In lions, larger groups retain carcasses against mobbing spotted hyenas…

An overview of cases where puma predation, though ecologically natural, poses risks to endangered or reintroduced prey populations. Examples include predation on woodland caribou, bighorn sheep, and r…

A survey of evidence that cougars can indirectly shape streamside plant communities by limiting and frightening deer. Where cougars are abundant, reduced and more wary deer browse cottonwoods, willows…

A survey of the three-way interactions among tigers, leopards and dholes, the dominant predators of South and Southeast Asian forests. These species partition a shared ungulate community by prey size…

An overview of how co-occurring small felids divide prey to coexist, a less-studied counterpart to big-cat guild ecology. Where species such as ocelots, margays, oncillas, jungle cats, leopard cats an…

An overview of the substantial toll free-ranging domestic cats take on wild birds, small mammals, reptiles and amphibians in urban, suburban and rural landscapes. Both owned outdoor cats and unowned f…

A survey of the factors that lead snow leopards to kill domestic livestock, the principal source of conflict that drives retaliatory killing of this endangered cat. Depredation rises where wild prey s…

A survey of how the kills of large cats function as a form of ecosystem engineering, structuring scavenger communities, nutrient flow and local biodiversity. Because predators such as pumas, leopards…

A survey of the conditions under which big cats switch from hunting to scavenging, and what this means for their ecology. Although large felids lack the scavenging specializations of hyenas and vultur…

A survey of how the teeth, jaws and bite mechanics of cats are adapted for killing prey and how these features scale with prey size. Felids dispatch prey with a precise canine bite to the neck or skul…

An overview of how predation by cats can influence the spread and prevalence of disease in their prey populations. By selectively removing sick, weak or behaviorally abnormal individuals, predators ma…

An overview of the central role small mammals play in the diets of small and medium cats and of big cats during prey shortages. Species such as wildcats, jungle cats, sand cats, ocelots and many other…

A survey of the documented and ongoing impacts of feral domestic cats on island vertebrates, among the most damaging examples of introduced-predator effects. Feral cats have contributed to dozens of b…

A survey of how Holling's functional-response framework is applied to cats to describe how their per-capita kill rate changes with prey density. Most felids are thought to show a saturating Type II re…

A survey of how giving-up density experiments quantify the fear that cats and other predators instill in their prey. By offering prey artificial food patches and measuring how much food they leave bef…

A survey of how prey use group living to reduce predation by cats, through the many-eyes effect, dilution, confusion and collective defense. Larger herds detect stalking felids sooner and dilute indiv…

An overview of how the spatial scale at which predators and prey use the landscape, their habitat domains, determines the strength and form of fear effects. When an ambush felid has a narrow, predicta…

A survey of how cooperative group hunting affects capture success in lions, one of the few social felids. Evidence shows that hunting success often increases with group size for large or difficult pre…

A survey of the lethal interactions between cats and dogs that share prey and space, a major structuring force in carnivore communities. Lions and hyenas kill wild dogs and cheetahs; pumas and coyotes…

An overview of the jaguar's distinctive predation on aquatic and semi-aquatic prey, especially caiman and capybara in wetland systems like the Pantanal and Llanos. The jaguar's powerful bite, capable…

A survey of how jaguars and pumas, the two large cats of the Neotropics, coexist across much of their shared range by partitioning prey, space and time. Jaguars generally take larger prey, including p…

A survey of how researchers locate and interpret felid kill sites and the biases that affect the resulting estimates of kill rate and prey composition. Field investigation of GPS clusters, snow-tracki…

A survey of the pervasive theft of kills within the African large-carnivore guild, where lions, spotted hyenas, leopards, cheetahs and wild dogs constantly contest carcasses. The direction and outcome…

An overview of how often cheetahs lose their kills to lions, hyenas and other competitors, and the consequences for cheetah foraging. Because cheetahs are exhausted after high-speed pursuits and canno…

A survey of the leopard's exceptionally broad diet, the widest of any large felid, which lets it occupy more habitats than any other big cat. Leopards eat dozens to over a hundred prey species across…

A survey of how the depletion of wild prey drives leopards to kill domestic livestock, fueling conflict that is a leading threat to the species. Across Africa and Asia, leopards persisting near people…

An overview of the significant and well-documented role of leopards as predators of primates, from monkeys to apes, and the evolutionary consequences for primate behavior. Leopards are major predators…