🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

South Africa's legal export of lion skeletons, drawn largely from its captive lion industry, created a regulated trade in lion bones destined for Asian markets, and with it a controversial conservatio…

The lion's mane is one of the most conspicuous ornaments among mammals, and research has explored what it advertises. This overview synthesizes experimental and observational work suggesting that mane…

This overview takes a deep-time perspective on the rise and fall of sabertooth cats, whose machairodont lineage flourished for more than ten million years before vanishing in the late Pleistocene. Aft…

The perennial tension between lumpers, who favor fewer broad taxa, and splitters, who recognize many fine ones, is sharply visible in cat classification. This overview examines how the debate plays ou…

This overview surveys the internal classification of the Machairodontinae, the true sabertooth cats within the family Felidae. Researchers commonly divide the subfamily into several tribes: the Smilod…

Whether any felid experiences a true menopause, with reproduction ceasing well before the end of life, is a subject of comparative interest. This overview surveys the evidence and theory bearing on po…

Before they can win a pride, young male lions endure a nomadic phase after being evicted from their natal range. This overview synthesizes what is known about this risky period: bachelors roam widely,…

Between leaving their natal pride and acquiring a pride of their own, male lions pass through a nomadic phase during which they range widely without a fixed territory. This overview surveys the ecolog…

This overview surveys evidence on where and when the Panthera lineage, the genus that includes lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars, and snow leopards, first arose. Molecular phylogenies place the diverge…

This overview traces how VHF radio-telemetry emerged in the late 1950s and 1960s, when biologists such as the Craighead brothers fitted grizzly bears in Yellowstone with radio collars and proved that…

Clouded leopards occupy a pivotal position as the sister group to the other big cats within the subfamily Pantherinae. This overview explains how molecular phylogenies consistently place the genus Neo…

The roar of a lion or tiger is among the loudest sounds a land mammal makes, and biomechanical research has sought to explain how such low, powerful sound is generated. This overview surveys findings…

The modern cats diversified into roughly forty species within the last eleven million years, a relatively rapid radiation that left a tangled phylogeny marked by short internal branches. This overview…

This overview explains the reasoning the Cat Classification Task Force used to justify a major revision rather than incremental edits. It describes the decision rules adopted: recognize taxa only when…

Night vision depends not only on rods but on a dedicated downstream circuit that carries their signals into the rest of the retina. This survey reviews the rod bipolar to AII amacrine cell pathway, a…

The serval, a long-legged African grassland cat, is the third member of the caracal lineage alongside the caracal and African golden cat. This overview reviews its taxonomic placement in the genus Lep…

The snow leopard belongs to the roaring lineage yet does not roar, and this overview reviews this exception and what it reveals. Although a member of Panthera, the snow leopard lacks the fully develop…

Sequencing the snow leopard genome alongside those of the tiger and lion advanced both big cat phylogenetics and the study of high-altitude adaptation. This overview surveys how the snow leopard genom…

Genetic and morphological research established that clouded leopards comprise two species, the mainland clouded leopard and the Sunda clouded leopard of Borneo and Sumatra, separated for over a millio…

One of the clearest recent felid species splits separated the clouded leopard into two species. This overview explains how parallel molecular and morphological studies in 2006 revealed that clouded le…

This overview examines the timing of extinction among the great carnivores of Rancho La Brea, including the sabertooth Smilodon fatalis and the American lion, whose latest dated remains cluster near t…

This overview reviews evidence on when and why the cave lion disappeared, with the latest well-dated records indicating survival into the terminal Pleistocene before extinction roughly fourteen thousa…

Modern lion taxonomy recognizes two subspecies divided by a north-south axis rather than the old African-Asian split. This overview explains the arrangement: Panthera leo leo covers North, West, and C…

Few wild populations have been studied as continuously as the lions of the Serengeti, where decades of records on known individuals have transformed understanding of the species. This overview synthes…

Alongside the area centralis, the cat retina has a horizontally elongated band of higher ganglion cell density known as the visual streak. This overview surveys the role of the visual streak, which pr…

This overview examines the growing emphasis on theory of change, explicit logic linking activities to intended outcomes, and rigorous evaluation in human-carnivore conflict interventions. It synthesis…

Lions and other wild felids host a range of tick-borne blood parasites including Babesia, Anaplasma, Ehrlichia and Hepatozoon, usually carried without obvious harm but capable of contributing to disea…

This overview synthesises research on whether wildlife-tourism revenue increases local tolerance for big cats by offsetting conflict costs. It reviews cases from jaguar tourism in the Pantanal, lion t…

Wildlife tourism, much of it built around charismatic big cats, generates revenue that can fund conservation and provide community benefits, but the distribution of those benefits strongly affects con…

Demand for big cat parts in traditional medicine, particularly bones believed to treat ailments, is a primary driver of poaching and trade affecting tigers, leopards, lions, and others. This overview…