🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

A survey of the anti-predator escape behaviors prey use once detected or attacked by cats and how they determine the outcome of a hunt. Prey employ rapid acceleration, unpredictable zig-zagging, stott…

Across Africa lions take a wide spectrum of prey but show local specialization driven by abundance and profitability. This overview examines how some prides become buffalo specialists, particularly wh…

An overview of the behavioral defenses ungulates and other prey deploy against felid predators, from vigilance scanning to alarm signaling and habitat avoidance. Because cats are stealthy ambush hunte…

A survey of how big cats process and consume their kills, and why handling time matters for kill-rate estimation and competition. Larger carcasses take longer to consume and force predators to remain…

A felid’s diet largely determines its parasite burden, as many worms and protozoa are acquired by eating infected prey. This overview surveys how prey-mediated transmission shapes the parasitic fauna…

A methodological survey of the indices used to measure whether felids prefer or avoid prey relative to availability, including the Jacobs index, Ivlev's electivity and related measures central to the…

An overview of how the range of prey sizes a felid exploits scales with its own body mass, producing the nested prey-size structure of carnivore communities. Larger cats not only take larger average p…

Progestin-based contraceptives have been used to suppress reproduction in captive cats, but concerns about side effects have shaped their use. This overview surveys the application of progestin contra…

How keepers interact with dangerous captive carnivores spans a spectrum from free contact, sharing space with the animal, to protected contact, where a barrier always separates human and cat. This ove…

Individual reserves are rarely large enough to sustain wide-ranging cats on their own, so conservation increasingly relies on networks of protected areas linked by corridors, and this overview examine…

Diseases of the reproductive tract, such as the uterine infection pyometra, affect fertility and welfare in domestic and nondomestic cats. This overview surveys reproductive tract pathology in felids,…

Deciding when a chronically ill or aged big cat's welfare no longer justifies continued life is among the most difficult tasks in captive felid care. This overview surveys structured quality-of-life a…

Numerical cognition has been studied extensively in birds and primates, and a smaller body of work asks whether cats discriminate quantities. This overview surveys experiments testing whether cats can…

Vaccines against feline immunodeficiency virus exist for domestic cats but raise complex questions when considered for wild felids harboring their own endemic lentiviruses. This overview surveys the i…

Rabies, an almost invariably fatal lyssavirus infection, occasionally strikes wild felids exposed through bites from infected dogs, jackals or other wildlife reservoirs. This overview surveys document…

Effective rabies control depends on surveillance that spans the carnivore community, since the virus circulates among dogs, jackals, mongooses, foxes and bat reservoirs that all interface with felids.…

A central question in distemper ecology is how a virus historically associated with dogs repeatedly jumps into cats. This overview surveys research on the molecular basis of canine distemper virus hos…

The kin structure of lion prides, with related females and coalitions of often-related males, underlies the cooperative behaviors that define the species. This overview surveys genetic studies of rela…

This overview examines how religious beliefs, sacred associations, and cultural traditions foster, or sometimes undermine, tolerance for big cats. It synthesises cases such as reverence for tigers and…

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…

This overview examines the pervasive problem of biased and incomplete data in human-big cat conflict research, which can distort understanding and management. It synthesises evidence that incidents ar…

Long-term studies of wild lions allow researchers to examine how female reproductive performance changes with age and whether lionesses experience a post-reproductive period. This overview surveys evi…

When males cooperate in coalitions, reproductive skew describes how evenly or unequally reproduction is divided among members. This overview surveys reproductive skew in felid coalitions, particularly…

Male reproductive success in cats depends on the ability to acquire and defend mating opportunities, which often declines with age as competitive ability wanes. This overview surveys how aging affects…

In some social or group-housed felids, subordinate individuals may experience reduced reproduction through social or physiological suppression. This overview surveys reproductive suppression in cats,…

Despite decades of study, major gaps remain in understanding disease in wild felids, particularly for less-studied species and regions. This overview surveys the priorities and unanswered questions in…

This overview examines retaliatory poisoning, a leading and indiscriminate cause of large-carnivore mortality, focusing on the misuse of agricultural pesticides such as carbofuran (sold as Furadan) la…

As public attitudes and laws have turned against using big cats in circuses, film and other entertainment, retiring these animals to lifetime care has become a significant welfare undertaking. This ov…

This overview examines the persistent gap between perceived and actual risk in human-big cat conflict, a theme cutting across lion, tiger, leopard, puma, and jaguar systems. It synthesises research sh…