🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

This overview explores the cultural and conflict-driven dimensions of lion killing among Maasai and related pastoralists, including the traditional olamayio lion hunt as a rite of warrior status along…

Rotational exhibit systems allow multiple species or individuals to take turns occupying a series of connected spaces, multiplying the effective territory and novelty available to each animal. This ov…

Sarcoptic mange, caused by the burrowing mite Sarcoptes scabiei, affects a wide range of carnivores and occasionally strikes large felids, producing hair loss, crusting, intense itching and debilitati…

Small cats seem to out-jump big cats relative to their size, and this overview reviews how jumping ability scales across the felid family. Physical principles predict that absolute jump height does no…

Lions are both hunters and scavengers, and their relationship with spotted hyenas is a central feature of African large-carnivore communities. This overview reviews how lions appropriate hyena kills a…

Many felids scavenge as well as hunt, and feeding on carcasses exposes them to pathogens including anthrax, bovine tuberculosis and parasites concentrated in dead and diseased animals. This overview s…

An overview of how much carrion features in the diets of cats traditionally viewed as pure hunters. While felids are generally more reliant on fresh kills than canids or hyaenids, many will scavenge o…

This overview examines the hypothesis that scavenging human corpses can initiate man-eating in big cats, drawing on historical episodes such as the Tsavo railway era and famine, epidemic, and conflict…

Lions advertise and defend territory through a combination of roaring, scent marking, and scrapes. This overview reviews how the long-range roar communicates presence and group identity, allowing prid…

Alongside roaring, lions use scent marking to advertise territory and reproductive status. This overview surveys research on lion olfactory communication, including urine spraying onto vegetation, scr…

Cats communicate and organise their world through scent, marking with urine spray, facial rubbing, scratching and other signals, and the ability to perform and perceive these behaviours matters for we…

This overview reviews research on when big-cat conflict peaks, examining seasonal and diel patterns in depredation and attacks across systems. It synthesises findings that conflict often rises during…

An overview of how the prey cats select shifts through the year with prey vulnerability, migration, birth pulses and weather. Many felids exploit seasonal ungulate calving and fawning peaks, when abun…

This overview examines the wider ecological fallout of retaliatory poisoning aimed at big cats, especially the catastrophic secondary poisoning of vultures and other scavengers that feed on laced carc…

An overview of the long-debated tendency of cats to kill the young, old, sick and injured disproportionately, and what it implies for predation impact. If predators chiefly remove individuals with low…

Interpreting antibody tests in wild felids is complicated by cross-reactivity, where antibodies to one pathogen react with tests for a related agent, blurring diagnoses. This overview surveys the diag…

Serological surveys, which detect antibodies as evidence of past or present infection, are a workhorse of wildlife disease epidemiology. This overview surveys how serosurveys reveal pathogen exposure…

The sex ratio of felid litters and any biases in maternal investment toward sons or daughters bear on population dynamics and evolutionary theory. This overview surveys evidence for sex ratio patterns…

A survey of how male and female lions differ in the prey they hunt and the habitats in which they hunt, driven by pronounced sexual size dimorphism. Larger, more powerful males are better able to tack…

In several big cats, males have larger, more robust skulls and stouter canines than females, and this overview reviews the patterns and their likely drivers. Such dimorphism is often linked to male-ma…

Infanticide by males is documented or inferred across many felid species, from lions to tigers, leopards, pumas, and others, wherever killing dependent young can hasten a female's next conception. Thi…

Cats naturally rest and sleep for much of the day, which complicates welfare interpretation because inactivity can reflect either healthy, contented rest or boredom, depression and learned helplessnes…

The vertical slit pupil of small cats is a striking feature, and this overview reviews why such pupils evolved. Comparative work links vertical slit pupils to small ambush predators active across a wi…

This overview reviews how wire snaring set for bushmeat indirectly drives big-cat conflict and mortality, a growing threat across Africa and Asia. It synthesises evidence that snares intended for ante…

Whether sabertoothed cats lived socially is debated, and this overview reviews the lines of evidence, including healed injuries and the abundance of Smilodon in deposits such as tar seeps. Some argue…

Felid sociality varies from the solitary tiger and most small cats to the group-living lion, and captive social management must respect these differences. This overview surveys research on housing cat…

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…

An overview comparing the hunting effectiveness of solitary felids with the cooperative hunting of lions, addressing why most cats hunt alone. Solitary ambush hunting suits stalking predators that tar…

An overview of how cheetahs reduce the risk of intraguild predation and kleptoparasitism by avoiding lions across space and time. As a subordinate cursorial predator, the cheetah suffers heavy cub mor…

Across felid species and populations, the quality of sperm morphology tends to correlate with the level of genetic diversity, linking population history to reproductive function. This overview surveys…