🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Some cats endure cold climates, and this overview reviews how they tolerate low temperatures. Cold-climate cats rely on dense, insulating fur, including seasonal thickening, on conserving core heat th…

Snow leopards inhabit vast, rugged ranges where direct contact is rare, making indirect communication essential. This overview surveys research on snow leopard signalling, including scrape marks, scen…

Because snow leopards live among pastoralist communities across remote mountains, community-based programs are central to their conservation. This overview surveys research on initiatives that align l…

This overview reviews community-managed livestock insurance schemes for snow leopard depredation in the mountains of northern Pakistan, where herders contribute premiums to village funds that compensa…

This overview examines community-run insurance schemes in which herders pay premiums into a locally managed fund that pays out for verified predator kills, an alternative to state or NGO compensation.…

This overview synthesises comparative studies that contrast successful and unsuccessful big-cat coexistence efforts to distil transferable lessons. It reviews analyses spanning lion, snow leopard, tig…

Felid species differ in their vocal repertoires, and comparative bioacoustics has sought to map these differences onto phylogeny and ecology. This overview surveys work cataloguing call types across s…

This overview synthesises comparisons between conventional compensation (post-hoc payment for verified losses, often state- or NGO-funded) and insurance models (premium-based funds, frequently communi…

This overview reviews performance-payment models that reward communities for conservation outcomes, such as the documented presence of breeding snow leopards or the absence of retaliatory killing, rat…

The most realistic forecasts of cat futures combine climate change with land-use change, since for many forest cats habitat conversion is the faster, larger threat. This overview surveys how integrate…

This overview synthesises scholarship that seeks to define coexistence as a positive conservation goal distinct from the mere absence of conflict. It reviews frameworks conceptualising coexistence as…

This overview synthesises the theory and practice of compensating farmers for livestock killed by big cats as a tolerance-building tool. It reviews recurring design challenges: verifying claims to pre…

A core prediction of climate change is that mountain species will shift upslope, and detecting such shifts in elusive cats is a methodological challenge. This overview surveys the evidence and approac…

This overview synthesises the widely replicated finding that proximity to forest or natural cover strongly predicts big-cat depredation on livestock, with attacks declining as distance from the forest…

A survey of the factors that lead snow leopards to kill domestic livestock, the principal source of conflict that drives retaliatory killing of this endangered cat. Depredation rises where wild prey s…

Conserving big cats in a human-dominated world depends on applying their ecology to the challenge of coexistence. This overview synthesizes how understanding prey requirements, ranging, dispersal, and…

Detecting climate-driven range shifts in snow leopards requires repeated, standardized occupancy surveys across elevation gradients. This overview surveys how camera-trap arrays and occupancy modeling…

In the mountains of Asia, common leopards, snow leopards, and tigers can occur along elevational gradients, partitioning the landscape by altitude and habitat. This overview synthesizes research on ho…

The physical environment of an enclosure, including space, complexity, seclusion, and the ability to avoid disturbance, influences the reproductive function of captive cats. This overview surveys how…

Vocal abilities are distributed across the felid family tree in informative ways, and this overview reviews the evolution of cat vocal anatomy. Mapping hyoid structure and laryngeal features onto feli…

This overview reviews how direct experience of livestock loss or a frightening encounter shapes attitudes and tolerance toward big cats, with mixed findings across studies. It synthesises evidence tha…

Preserving the balanced genetic contribution of the original founders is a central goal of captive breeding, since uneven representation accelerates the loss of diversity. This overview surveys how fo…

This overview synthesises emerging priorities and frontiers in human-big cat conflict and coexistence research. It reviews calls for more rigorous impact evaluation, greater integration of social scie…

Existing protected-area networks were largely designed around present-day distributions and may not cover where species will need to be as the climate changes. This overview surveys gap analyses that…

Snow leopard populations are distributed across a network of mountain ranges separated by valleys and basins, and genetic studies probe how connected they remain. This overview synthesizes work using…

The snow leopard inhabits the high mountains of Central and South Asia and is the most basal or near-basal member of the genus Panthera in many analyses. This overview surveys genomic studies examinin…

The mountains of High Asia store water as snow and ice, and accelerating glacial retreat reshapes downstream hydrology that supports the meadows and prey of snow leopards. This overview surveys how ch…

Big cats select habitat at multiple scales, balancing the need for prey, cover for stalking, water, and shelter against the risks posed by competitors and humans. This overview synthesizes research sh…

This overview synthesises research quantifying the economic burden of big-cat depredation on rural households, emphasising that losses small in aggregate can be devastating to individual families. It…

The advent of GPS collars and biologging sensors has revolutionized the study of big-cat movement, hunting, and energetics. This overview synthesizes how high-resolution location data revealed kill si…