🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

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…

Lion hunting success varies enormously with prey species, group size, habitat cover, time of day, and moon phase. This overview synthesizes field studies showing that lions exploit darkness and vegeta…

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…

A survey of how the synchronized mass calving and movement of migratory wildebeest may swamp predators, reducing per-capita predation on any individual. By giving birth in a brief, highly synchronized…

Detecting and responding to felid disease depends on organized surveillance networks that gather and share data across regions and institutions. This overview surveys the structure and function of wil…

Controlling rabies in its wildlife and domestic reservoirs indirectly protects wild felids that are spillover victims of the disease. This overview surveys rabies control strategies relevant to felid…

This overview synthesises social-psychological research on how wildlife value orientations, broad belief systems ranging from domination to mutualism, shape attitudes toward large carnivores and toler…

Rising carbon dioxide, altered rainfall, and changed fire and grazing regimes are driving woody plant encroachment into many African savannas, reshaping habitat for cats and their prey. This overview…

This experiment played recordings of one or three roaring strangers to prides and measured how resident females responded. Lionesses were more cautious when outnumbered and more likely to approach whe…

McComb, K., Packer, C., Pusey, A. E. · Animal Behaviour · 1994

Playback experiments on Serengeti lionesses tested whether females could judge the size of an intruding group from its roars. Researchers broadcast recordings of one versus three unfamiliar females an…

Karen McComb, Craig Packer, Anne Pusey · Animal Behaviour · 1994

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

This study examined the large domestic dog population living around the Serengeti to test whether dogs sustained the canine distemper virus that spilled into lions and other carnivores. Through serosu…

S. Cleaveland, M. G. J. Appel, W. S. K. Chalmers, et al. · Veterinary Microbiology · 2000

This comprehensive study screened thousands of samples from many felid species plus hyenas for feline immunodeficiency virus and sequenced isolates to map viral diversity. The authors confirmed that F…

J. L. Troyer, J. Pecon-Slattery, M. E. Roelke, et al. · Journal of Virology · 2005

Combining field observations with experiments using life-sized dummy lions, researchers tested what information a male's mane signals. Darker manes indicated higher testosterone and better nutrition,…

Peyton West, Craig Packer · Science · 2002

This early study documented how takeovers of prides by new male coalitions are followed by the death of dependent cubs, and how females then return to estrus and breed with the incoming males. By trac…

Bertram, B. C. R. · Journal of Zoology · 1975

This early field study examined how the social organization of lion prides governs which individuals breed and how successfully. The author related pride size, the tenure of resident male coalitions,…

Bertram BCR · Journal of Zoology · 1975

This influential review synthesized the global status of the largest carnivores, including big cats such as lions, tigers, leopards, and jaguars, documenting widespread range contraction and populatio…

Ripple, W.J., Estes, J.A., Beschta, R.L., Wilmers, C.C., Ritchie, E.G., Hebblewhite, M., et al. · Science · 2014

The big cats of the genus Panthera proved historically difficult to resolve because of rapid speciation and conflicting gene trees. This study assembled a large multilocus supermatrix and applied both…

Brian W. Davis, Gang Li, William J. Murphy · Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution · 2010

Relationships among the big cats long resisted resolution because of short internal branches and conflicting markers. This study assembled a large multi-gene dataset and applied both concatenated supe…

Davis BW, Li G, Murphy WJ · Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution · 2010

This study built a high-resolution finite-element model of the skull of the sabertoothed cat Smilodon fatalis and compared its mechanical behaviour with that of a modern lion. The simulations indicate…

McHenry, C.R.; Wroe, S.; Clausen, P.D.; Moreno, K.; Cunningham, E. · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2007

Kruuk documented and analyzed cases where carnivores kill far more prey than they can consume, challenging the assumption that predators only take what they need. Drawing on spotted hyena and other ca…

Kruuk, H. · Journal of Zoology · 1972

This study analyzed lion population structure and history using both the lions' own genetic markers and the genomes of feline immunodeficiency virus strains that infect them. By treating the virus as…

Agostinho Antunes, Stephen J. O'Brien, et al. · PLoS Genetics · 2008

This study combined genomes from modern lions across Africa and India with ancient DNA from extinct cave lions to reconstruct the deep history of the lion lineage. The authors estimated that cave lion…

Marc de Manuel, Ross Barnett, Tomas Marques-Bonet, et al. · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2020