🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Mice communicate using ultrasonic vocalizations well above the human hearing range, and these calls fall squarely within what cats can detect. This overview surveys the intersection of rodent ultrason…

The reflective tapetum is not fully mature at birth, and its development parallels the broader maturation of the kitten visual system. This overview surveys what is known about how the tapetum forms a…

The familiar reaction to catnip does not appear until a kitten is several months old, making it a developmentally timed sensory behavior. This overview surveys the onset of the catnip response, which…

The funnel shape of the cat's pinna collects sound and boosts sensitivity in the direction it faces, providing directional acoustic gain. This overview surveys how the pinna concentrates sound energy…

A cat's ears reveal where its attention lies, swiveling toward sounds of interest even when the head and eyes are still. This overview surveys how ear orientation serves as a readout of auditory atten…

Beyond their auditory role, the highly mobile feline ears are an important channel of visual communication. This overview surveys how ear position signals emotional state, with upright forward ears in…

Touch is one of the earliest functional senses in kittens, and the whisker system is important from the beginning of life. This overview surveys early tactile and whisker development in kittens, which…

Electroretinography and single-cell recording have been used to probe how the cat retina responds to different wavelengths, providing physiological evidence about color processing. This overview surve…

Kittens are born with their eyes closed and acquire functional vision gradually over the first weeks of life. This overview surveys the timeline of feline visual development, beginning with the eyes o…

Cats have scent glands on the face, including around the cheeks, chin, and lips, that deposit pheromones when the cat rubs its head against objects, people, or other cats. This overview surveys these…

The cochlea is the inner-ear structure that converts sound into neural signals, and its mechanics set the frequency range an animal can hear. This overview surveys what is known about the feline cochl…

Cats are generally understood to be dichromats, possessing two functional cone types rather than the three that give humans full color vision. This overview surveys behavioral and physiological eviden…

Mice and other rodents produce vocalizations and movement sounds that extend into ultrasonic frequencies inaudible to humans, and cats are well equipped to hear them. This overview surveys how the cat…

Cats famously fail to respond to sweet tastes, and this trait is rooted in their genetics and diet. This overview surveys the phenomenon of feline sweet blindness, in which cats lack a functional swee…

Whiskers, or vibrissae, are specialized tactile hairs that give cats a high-resolution sense of touch crucial for navigation and hunting. This overview surveys the types and distribution of feline vib…

Cat urine contains felinine, an amino-acid-derived compound that breaks down into volatile sulfur-containing molecules responsible for the strong odor of cat marks. This overview surveys the role of f…

Beyond the face and paws, cats have scent glands on other parts of the body, including along the tail and flanks, that contribute to chemical marking. This overview surveys these additional glandular…

Cats are exquisitely sensitive to movement, and their temporal vision, including the rate at which flickering light fuses into a steady image, shapes how they perceive motion. This overview surveys fe…

Cats have forward-facing eyes with substantial binocular overlap, giving them stereoscopic depth perception that complements any depth cues from pupil shape. This overview surveys how binocular vision…

Beyond detecting sounds, cats can discriminate between tones of different pitch, a capacity studied through behavioral and physiological methods. This overview surveys feline frequency discrimination,…

As a cat moves, it tends to hold its head steady, stabilizing the platform on which its eyes and inner ears sit. This overview surveys head stabilization during locomotion, in which vestibular and vis…

A well-known link in feline sensory biology connects white coat color, blue eyes, and congenital deafness. This overview surveys the association between the dominant white gene and inner-ear degenerat…

Not all cats respond to catnip, and the trait appears to be inherited. This overview surveys evidence that responsiveness to catnip is governed by genetics, with roughly two-thirds of cats showing the…

Cats sometimes fall from windows and balconies, and veterinary observations of these incidents, sometimes called high-rise syndrome, have produced counterintuitive findings. This overview surveys repo…

Reflecting light back through the retina improves sensitivity but also scatters photons, slightly degrading the sharpness of the image. This overview surveys discussion of that tradeoff in cats, where…

Cats frequently locate and strike at prey they cannot see, relying on hearing to guide the attack. This overview surveys how acute sound localization and broad, high-reaching hearing enable cats to hu…

Each of a cat's ears can move independently, allowing it to monitor two directions at once or to converge both ears on a single sound. This overview surveys the behavioral and functional significance…

Each cat may carry a distinctive chemical signature encoded in its scent marks and body odor, allowing other cats to recognize individuals. This overview surveys the idea that the mixture of compounds…

When cats scratch surfaces, they leave more than visible marks; scent glands between the toes deposit chemical signals as well. This overview surveys the role of interdigital, or paw, glands in scent…

The active ingredients behind the silver vine and catnip response belong to a class of plant compounds called iridoids, with nepetalactol identified as a particularly potent driver of the reaction in…