🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

This overview examines how the extinction risk of small wildcats is assessed and the difficulties involved. Status assessments draw on distribution, population size and trend, habitat, and threats to…

Few cats are as difficult to study as the sand cat, and this overview reviews the methodological problems that leave its status uncertain. The species low density, nocturnality, remote desert habitat,…

The sand cat is a textbook example of desert specialization, and this overview reviews the suite of adaptations that let it thrive where temperatures swing sharply and water is scarce. Dense fur cover…

Shelter is central to sand cat survival, and this overview compiles what is known about its use of burrows. The cat digs shallow burrows or enlarges those of foxes, porcupines, and rodents, retreating…

Dietary studies describe the sand cat as a hunter of small desert vertebrates, with gerbils and other rodents forming the core of the diet alongside lizards, snakes, birds, and insects. This overview…

The sand cat is the only felid largely confined to true desert, ranging in scattered populations across the Sahara, the Arabian Peninsula, and the deserts of central Asia. This overview compiles recor…

This overview examines how the sand cat schedules activity to survive desert extremes. Telemetry and observation show the species is strongly nocturnal, emerging after dark to hunt and travel long dis…

This synthesis reviews the conservation standing of the sand cat, generally assessed as low risk but acknowledged to rest on sparse data. It weighs threats including habitat degradation from grazing a…

This landmark genetic study reconstructed the evolutionary history of the cat family, using molecular data across all living felid species to resolve the major lineages and their divergence times. It…

Johnson WE, Eizirik E, Pecon-Slattery J, Murphy WJ, Antunes A, Teeling E, OBrien SJ · Science · 2006