🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Small cats present a hardware problem: their necks may be too slender or their lives too cryptic for conventional collars, so researchers explore alternatives. This overview considers ear-mounted tags…

The African wildcat, closely related to the domestic cat, has been a key species for demonstrating embryo transfer and related technologies in a wild felid. This overview surveys work in which African…

An overview of the central role small mammals play in the diets of small and medium cats and of big cats during prey shortages. Species such as wildcats, jungle cats, sand cats, ocelots and many other…

Feline leukemia virus is fundamentally a domestic-cat pathogen, yet it has crossed into endangered wild felids with lethal consequences. This overview surveys documented and suspected spillover events…

Despite descending from wildcats only thousands of years ago, domestic cats differ subtly in genetics and behavior, and characterizing this divergence illuminates the domestication process. This overv…

The European wildcat, Felis silvestris, persists in fragmented populations from Iberia and Scotland through central and eastern Europe to the Caucasus. This overview surveys studies of its genetic str…

The Chinese mountain cat, a poorly known felid endemic to the Tibetan Plateau region, has been the subject of debate over whether it is a distinct species, a wildcat subspecies, and whether it contrib…

Hybridization between cat species, both in captivity and occasionally in the wild, has played a larger role in felid evolution than once appreciated. This overview surveys the spectrum from ancient in…

The European wildcat faces a dual threat from domestic cats: genetic swamping through hybridization and the exchange of pathogens that accompanies close contact. This overview surveys how interbreedin…

For several wildcat populations, the greatest threat is not habitat loss or persecution but genetic assimilation through hybridization with domestic cats. This overview examines how introgression enda…

Where small wild felids overlap with free-ranging domestic cats around settlements, hybridisation and disease transmission can threaten the genetic integrity and health of wild populations. This overv…

The European wildcat faces a genetic threat from interbreeding with free-ranging domestic cats, which can erode the wild population's distinct genome through introgression. This overview surveys genet…

Transferring embryos of a rare cat into a more common related species as surrogate offers a way to produce offspring without risking the endangered female. This overview surveys interspecies embryo tr…

Genomic work on the Chinese mountain cat addressed whether it contributed to East Asian domestic cats and revealed instead a one-directional pattern. This overview explains that domestic cats in China…

Because domestic cats descend from wildcats and remain interfertile with them, introgression is a pervasive problem in wildcat taxonomy and conservation. This overview explains how gene flow from fera…

The Chinese mountain cat, a sandy-colored felid of the eastern Tibetan Plateau, has been classified both as a full species, Felis bieti, and as a subspecies of the wildcat, Felis silvestris bieti. Thi…

Although all modern house cats descend from the Near Eastern wildcat, archaeological cats at early Chinese farming villages were later identified as leopard cats, a different genus-level relative. Thi…

Many landscapes host several small cats at once, and this overview reviews how they coexist through niche partitioning. Studies of Neotropical and Asian cat assemblages show that sympatric species div…

Distinguishing a true wildcat from a tabby domestic cat or hybrid is a practical taxonomic challenge with conservation stakes. This overview describes the morphological characters used, including a bu…

Genetic tools illuminate how feral cat populations are connected, structured and sourced, informing management, and this overview surveys that research. It examines studies using molecular markers to…

Habitat loss and fragmentation increasingly isolate cat populations into small patches separated by inhospitable terrain, reducing effective population size and gene flow. This overview surveys how co…

Felids span from sub-kilogram wildcats to lions and tigers of well over a hundred kilograms, and body size profoundly shapes how they move. This overview reviews how speed, acceleration, jumping abili…

Banking living somatic cells, such as skin fibroblasts, preserves an individual's full genome for potential future use in cloning or stem cell technologies. This overview surveys the collection, cultu…

How many species the wildcat complex contains has shifted with new evidence and species concepts. This overview traces the debate from treating all wildcats as one species, Felis silvestris, with many…

Genetic and archaeological evidence converge on the African or Near Eastern wildcat, Felis lybica, as the sole wild ancestor of all domestic cats. This overview explains how the foundational phylogeog…

The Asiatic or Indian desert wildcat, often classified as Felis lybica ornata, ranges across Central and South Asia in arid and semi-arid habitats. This overview reviews its taxonomic placement within…

The Felis lineage contains the domestic cat and its closest wild relatives, including the European wildcat, the African and Near Eastern wildcat, the sand cat, the jungle cat, the black-footed cat, an…

The wildcat complex is among the most taxonomically debated felid groups because of its broad range, clinal variation, and entanglement with the domestic cat. This overview surveys the complex's struc…

Animal domestication is often described as following three routes: a commensal pathway, a prey pathway and a directed pathway. This overview focuses on the commensal model as applied to cats, in which…

Wildcats on some Mediterranean islands, such as Sardinia, Corsica, and Crete, were long treated as native subspecies, but genetic studies suggest they descend from cats introduced by humans. This over…