🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Roughly two-thirds of domestic cats display a stereotyped response to catnip, sniffing, licking, rolling, and rubbing, triggered by the compound nepetalactone acting through the olfactory and vomerona…

Most cats share a conserved chromosome number, but the ocelot lineage is distinguished by a reduced karyotype resulting from a chromosomal fusion. This overview explains how Leopardus species carry 36…

This overview surveys how and when true cats first reached North America, ending the long cat gap. The earliest felids evolved in the Old World, and their descendants crossed the Bering land bridge du…

The bay cat, Catopuma badia, is endemic to Borneo and among the least known of all cats, with very few observations or specimens. This overview examines its taxonomy, including its placement in the ba…

The genus Prionailurus includes not only leopard cats but also the fishing cat and flat-headed cat, specialized wetland felids. This overview examines their placement within the leopard cat lineage an…

The flat-headed cat is among the rarest cats in the camera-trap record, and this overview reviews the resulting challenges. Its restricted range, narrow wetland habitat, nocturnal habits, and apparent…

Play is energetically costly and potentially risky, yet pervasive in young cats, prompting debate over its functions. This overview surveys the major hypotheses, including play as practice for predati…

This overview examines the fundamental mechanical compromise that shaped sabertooth skulls: achieving a gape wide enough to clear elongated canines came at the cost of bite force. Opening the jaws to…

Toxoplasma is maintained in both domestic cycles centered on house cats and sylvatic cycles driven by wild felids, and the two intersect in complex ways. This overview surveys how domestic and wild tr…

Familiar keepers occupy a special place in a captive animal's social environment, and the quality of the keeper-animal relationship can influence stress, cooperation and welfare. This overview surveys…

The landscape-of-fear concept holds that perceived predation risk, including risk from humans acting as super-predators, reshapes where and how animals move, feed and rest. This overview synthesises e…

The release of mature eggs in cats depends on a surge of luteinizing hormone from the pituitary, which in most species is evoked by the sensory stimulus of mating. This overview describes how the magn…

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…

The rusty-spotted cat, one of the smallest of all cats, is found in India and Sri Lanka and belongs to the leopard cat lineage. This overview reviews its placement within the genus Prionailurus, where…

The rusty-spotted cat vies with the black-footed cat for the title of smallest wild cat, and this overview reviews its diminutive size and associated biology. Weighing roughly one to one and a half ki…

Molecular phylogeography revealed that leopard cats on the Sunda islands of Southeast Asia diverge deeply from mainland leopard cats, leading to recognition of a separate species, the Sunda leopard ca…

Despite being a large cat, the cheetah cannot roar and instead produces a distinctive repertoire including bird-like chirps, stutter-bark calls, churrs, and purring. This overview surveys descriptions…

This overview surveys how the presence and behaviour of visitors specifically affect captive cats, a group that frequently responds to crowds with vigilance, hiding or altered activity. It examines st…

Felid species span tropical jungles, deserts and high mountains, so meeting their thermal needs in captivity, often in non-native climates, is a real welfare challenge. This overview surveys thermal w…

As temperatures rise, cats may adjust their activity patterns to avoid heat, shifting toward more nocturnal or crepuscular behavior, with consequences for hunting and human overlap. This overview surv…

Cities create urban heat islands and altered microclimates that can impose thermal stress on felids, influencing their use of shade, water and cool refuges, especially as climate warming intensifies.…

Standard home ranges flatten an animal's world onto a two-dimensional map, but cats in mountainous terrain move through strongly three-dimensional space, and their ranges shift across seasons. This ov…

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…

The combination of the dissociative anesthetic tiletamine with the benzodiazepine zolazepam, marketed as Telazol or Zoletil, is widely used for chemical restraint and anesthesia of felids ranging from…

True tool use is essentially absent in cats, but felids display tool-adjacent behaviours that involve manipulating objects and environments to achieve goals. This overview surveys examples such as usi…

A predator teeth are subjected to repeated high loads, and this overview surveys patterns of tooth fracture and wear in wild felids and what they reveal. Broken canines and worn carnassials accumulate…

While cats typically host Toxoplasma without illness, immunocompromise can unleash severe, even fatal toxoplasmosis in felids. This overview surveys the conditions under which the parasite causes clin…

Roads impede wildlife not only by the physical danger of traffic but through sensory disturbance, and this overview examines how noise and artificial light can deter felids from approaching or crossin…

Moving cats between institutions for breeding, rescue or management is a recognised acute stressor with welfare implications. This overview surveys the science of felid transport and transfer: the str…

An overview of how large cats can structure ecosystems from the top down, with effects rippling through herbivores to vegetation and beyond. By killing and frightening herbivores, apex felids such as…