🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Atipamezole, an alpha-2 adrenergic antagonist, reverses the sedative and immobilizing effects of medetomidine and dexmedetomidine, allowing controlled and rapid recovery from anesthetic protocols that…

Assisted reproductive technologies, including artificial insemination, semen and embryo cryopreservation, and in vitro fertilization, have been applied to felids to support captive breeding and conser…

Capture myopathy, a potentially fatal syndrome of muscle damage arising from the stress, exertion, and physiologic derangement of capture and restraint, is a recognized risk when immobilizing wild fel…

Captive cheetahs are notably prone to a severe chronic gastritis associated with Helicobacter infection, a condition far more debilitating in captive than in wild cheetahs, suggesting that stress, imm…

While remote darting is essential for immobilizing dangerous felids, the dart itself can cause injury, including muscle trauma, infection at the injection site, bone impact, or, rarely, penetration of…

Accurate drug dosing for field immobilization depends on estimating the body weight of an unweighable free-ranging felid, a source of significant error that can lead to underdosing, with dangerous inc…

Captive big cats now routinely reach advanced ages, and zoos have developed geriatric care programs addressing arthritis, dental disease, kidney and heart disease, cancer, and quality-of-life assessme…

Hand-rearing orphaned or maternally rejected big cat cubs requires specialized veterinary and husbandry knowledge covering appropriate milk replacers matched to species composition, prevention of nutr…

Translocating wild felids for conservation, conflict mitigation, or population management involves significant veterinary considerations, including pre-release health screening, disease risk assessmen…

Anesthetizing large felids carries substantial physiologic risk, and monitoring of oxygenation, ventilation, heart rate, blood pressure, and temperature is essential, with pulse oximetry, capnography,…

Modern zoos run structured preventive medicine programs for captive felids encompassing routine health monitoring, parasite control, vaccination, nutritional management, dental care, and increasingly…

Remote drug delivery using dart guns and pole syringes enables chemical immobilization of dangerous or free-ranging felids from a safe distance, a foundational technique for field and zoo capture. Suc…

Chronic kidney disease is a common cause of illness and death in aging captive big cats, paralleling its prominence in domestic cats and reflecting the longer lifespans achieved in managed care. Capti…

Maintaining safe body temperature is a critical concern during felid immobilization, as captured cats can become dangerously hyperthermic from exertion and heat in warm climates or hypothermic during…

Captive big cats are vaccinated against diseases that threaten felids, including panleukopenia, the respiratory viruses, and rabies, with protocols adapted from domestic-cat guidelines but informed by…

Feeding captive big cats appropriately requires meeting their obligate-carnivore nutritional needs, with debate and research around whole-prey versus formulated diets, calcium-phosphorus balance, taur…

This influential study revealed that cheetahs possess strikingly low genetic variation, demonstrated by extreme similarity at protein-coding loci and, in later related work, acceptance of reciprocal s…

O'Brien SJ, Wildt DE, Goldman D, Merril CR, Bush M · Science · 1983