🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

This survey reviews how snow leopard species distribution models are run across contrasting greenhouse-gas emissions pathways to bracket the range of plausible future habitat. It explains how downscal…

Genetic studies of snow leopards have sought to characterize diversity and structure across a range spanning the Himalaya, Tibetan Plateau, and Central Asian mountains. This overview surveys research,…

Snow leopards inhabit the high mountains of Central and South Asia, selecting steep, broken terrain that aids stalking and escape. This overview synthesizes telemetry and survey studies showing that s…

GPS collaring has transformed understanding of snow leopard spatial ecology, revealing far larger home ranges than earlier studies suggested. This overview synthesizes tracking work, notably from Mong…

Applying the GPS-cluster method developed for pumas to snow leopards has begun to quantify how often these cats kill and what they eat, central questions for both ecology and conflict management. This…

This overview synthesises studies of snow leopard predation on livestock across the mountains of Central and South Asia, from Ladakh and Spiti to the Pamirs and Mongolia. It reviews patterns of loss,…

Snow leopards are killed and traded for their thick pelts and their bones, the latter increasingly drawn into the same markets that consume tiger and lion bone. This overview surveys research on snow…

Snow leopards occur at naturally low density across a patchy, mountainous range, so climate-driven habitat fragmentation poses a real risk to gene flow. This overview surveys what noninvasive genetic…

Snow leopards inhabit some of the most remote, rugged, high-altitude terrain on Earth, making camera trapping one of the few feasible ways to estimate their numbers. This overview surveys the methods…

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…

The arid mountains of Mongolia and the Gobi support an important snow leopard population at the dry edge of the species' climate envelope. This overview surveys how warming and changing precipitation…

Snow leopards depend heavily on mountain ungulates, especially blue sheep and ibex, across their range. This overview synthesizes diet studies showing that these wild caprids form the core of the snow…

Snow leopards inhabit steep mountain landscapes where conditions and prey shift markedly with elevation and season, and this overview examines how their movements track these changes. GPS telemetry ha…

Snow leopards range across roughly a dozen countries in the mountains of Central and South Asia, and their movements routinely cross international borders, making transboundary connectivity essential…

Snow leopards depend primarily on wild mountain ungulates such as blue sheep, ibex, argali, and marmots, and the health of these prey populations governs snow leopard numbers. This overview surveys re…

Across most of their range, snow leopards share the landscape with pastoralist communities and their livestock rather than occupying pristine wilderness, and this overview examines what movement resea…

This overview synthesises research showing that much apparent human-carnivore conflict is in fact conflict between human groups, communities versus conservation authorities, locals versus outsiders, e…

Initiatives to receive signals from very small animal tags via satellites or the International Space Station, such as the ICARUS effort, promise to shrink trackers and broaden which species can be fol…

Where multiple cat species coexist, smaller felids often adjust their use of space and time to avoid larger, dominant competitors, and camera-trap data are a primary means of detecting these interacti…

The grain and extent at which a habitat model is built strongly influence its conclusions, a key consideration for wide-ranging cats. This overview surveys how the choice of spatial resolution, from c…

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,…

In and around many South Asian cities, free-ranging and stray dogs constitute a major prey base that sustains leopards at densities unattainable on wild prey alone. This overview synthesises diet and…

Different cat species carry different natural marks, tiger stripes, leopard and jaguar rosettes, ocelot chains, cheetah spots, and pattern-matching software exploits these to identify individuals semi…

The leopard is the most widely distributed big cat, ranging across Africa and Asia, and genetic studies have refined its subspecies framework. This overview surveys evidence that African leopards form…

After the Sunda clouded leopard, Neofelis diardi, was recognized as a species, attention turned to whether its Bornean and Sumatran populations are themselves distinct. This overview reviews studies s…

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…

This concluding overview synthesizes how the study of felid movement has evolved from sparse VHF triangulation to dense, multi-sensor biologging that captures not only where cats go but what they do a…

In endangered cats, individual temperament can determine reproductive success and welfare in managed-care programs. This overview surveys research extending the cheetah findings to other species, exam…

In 1994 a canine distemper epidemic swept the Serengeti, killing roughly a third of its lions and spreading to leopards, hyenas and other carnivores. This overview reconstructs the outbreak timeline:…