🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Recovering sperm by urethral catheterization after pharmacological stimulation offers an alternative to electroejaculation for collecting felid semen. This overview surveys the use of this technique i…

Non-invasive cortisol metabolite monitoring lets keepers test whether husbandry changes actually reduce physiological stress, moving welfare management from intuition to evidence. This overview survey…

After SARS-CoV-2 reached zoo animals, some facilities vaccinated captive carnivores, including big cats, using animal-specific vaccines to reduce the risk of severe disease. This overview surveys the…

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…

Vaccinating endangered wild felids against canine distemper is fraught with trade-offs. This overview surveys the options: modified-live vaccines, which risk vaccine-induced disease in non-target spec…

Modified-live canine distemper vaccines, while protective in dogs, have caused vaccine-induced disease when given to some nondomestic carnivores, complicating efforts to protect wild felids. This over…

Faecal glucocorticoid metabolite monitoring is the workhorse of felid stress research because it avoids the confound of capture and restraint, but it requires species-specific validation to be meaning…

Assessing whether a habitat model is any good requires careful evaluation, especially when projecting into the future where ground truth is unavailable. This overview surveys the metrics used, AUC, tr…

Cats are arboreal-capable, climbing predators that value height, and research consistently shows captive felids prefer and benefit from elevated resting platforms, climbing structures and visually com…

This overview synthesises studies analysing who is attacked by tigers and leopards and under what circumstances, drawing on incident records across South Asia. It reviews patterns by age, sex, occupat…

This overview reviews the contested practice of voluntarily relocating villages out of tiger-reserve cores in India to reduce human-tiger conflict and create inviolate breeding habitat. It synthesises…

Tigers use a repertoire of calls, including powerful roars rich in low-frequency and infrasonic energy that carry far through forest. This overview synthesizes research on how these vocalizations adve…

A lion roar is astonishingly loud and low, and this overview reviews the vocal-fold anatomy behind it. Studies of big cat larynges found unusually large, robust vocal folds with a thick layer of fat a…

Unlike most cats, tigers readily enter water and swim, and providing pools is considered an important welfare and enrichment feature for the species. This overview surveys evidence and practice around…

Managers of reserves holding lions, tigers, and other cats sometimes provision artificial water to buffer wildlife against drought, a practice with contested ecological consequences. This overview sur…

Weaning marks the shift from dependence on maternal milk to consuming solid prey, a gradual transition whose timing varies with species and circumstances. This overview surveys weaning ages across the…

Private ownership of tigers, lions and other big cats, historically widespread in some countries, raises acute welfare and public-safety concerns. This overview surveys the issues: inadequate enclosur…

Cub-petting attractions, where the public pays to handle tiger, lion and other big-cat cubs, depend on a continuous supply of young animals within a narrow handleable age window. This overview surveys…

Conceptual frameworks structure how we judge captive animal welfare, and they have evolved over time. This overview surveys the progression from the Five Freedoms, freedom from hunger, discomfort, pai…

Many big cats live in poorly regulated roadside zoos and facilities that adopt the sanctuary label without meeting its standards, raising acute welfare concerns. This overview surveys the issues disti…

Safari parks house big cats, especially lions, in large drive-through enclosures that visitors traverse by vehicle, a model with distinctive welfare features. This overview surveys the welfare conside…

Beyond white tigers, other captive felid colour variants, white lions and the patterned king cheetah, raise similar questions about breeding for appearance. This overview surveys the genetics of these…

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…

Although domestic cats have vertical-slit pupils, large felids such as lions and tigers have round pupils, a contrast that has attracted scientific attention. This overview surveys the explanation tie…

The roaring big cats and the purring small cats appear to form complementary groups, and this overview reviews the basis and limits of this divide. The flexible, incompletely ossified hyoid and specia…

Cats are notably permissive to SARS-CoV-2, a susceptibility rooted in the structure of their ACE2 receptor, which the viral spike protein binds efficiently. This overview surveys comparative studies o…

Swaisgood and Shepherdson reviewed how rigorously zoos had studied enrichment and stereotypy, surveying the published literature for methodological quality. They found many anecdotal claims but a grow…

Swaisgood RR, Shepherdson DJ · Zoo Biology · 2005

This pioneering study quantified how projected sea-level rise threatens the tigers of the Sundarbans, the world's largest mangrove forest and home to a unique population of Bengal tigers. Using elevat…

Loucks, C., Barber-Meyer, S., Hossain, M.A.A., Barlow, A., Chowdhury, R.M. · Climatic Change · 2010

This edited volume brought together early scientific work on environmental enrichment, consolidating it into a coherent field. Chapters covered the history, theory, design and evaluation of enrichment…

Shepherdson DJ, Mellen JD, Hutchins M (eds) · Smithsonian Institution Press · 1998

Wells reviewed how stimulating the senses, through olfactory, auditory, visual and tactile inputs, can enrich captive animals. She summarised evidence that scents such as spices and prey odours, sound…

Wells DL · Applied Animal Behaviour Science · 2009