🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Cats living in groups engage in allogrooming, licking one another, and allorubbing, rubbing bodies together, behaviours that build and maintain social bonds. This overview surveys research on these af…

Allonursing, the nursing of non-offspring, is best documented in lions but reported in other group-living or colonial felid contexts, including domestic cat colonies. This overview surveys research on…

When cats rub against each other, a behavior called allorubbing, they mingle their scents and may create a shared group odor. This overview surveys allorubbing and related allomarking behaviors, in wh…

Atipamezole, an alpha-2 adrenergic antagonist, reverses the sedative and immobilizing effects of medetomidine and dexmedetomidine, allowing controlled and rapid recovery from anesthetic protocols that…

The high plateaus and meadows that underpin snow leopard prey systems are sensitive to warming, permafrost thaw, and altered precipitation. This overview surveys how degradation of alpine grassland on…

A survey of the role that secondary prey such as red squirrels, grouse and microtine rodents play in the dynamics of the snowshoe hare cycle and its lynx predators. When hares are abundant, predators…

A survey of the two principal felid hunting strategies, stalk-and-ambush used by most cats and the high-speed pursuit of the cheetah, and their ecological consequences. Ambush predators rely on cover…

Cats evaluate food partly through the tastes of specific amino acids, which signal protein content and palatability. This overview surveys how feline taste preferences are shaped by amino acids, with…

Chemical immobilisation is sometimes unavoidable for examining or treating large carnivores, but it carries welfare and mortality risks and is itself stressful. This overview surveys the welfare consi…

Cats possess paired anal sacs that produce a strongly scented secretion thought to contribute to individual odor identity and communication. This overview surveys what is known about these secretions,…

The Barbary lion of North Africa, extinct in the wild by the mid-twentieth century, was long thought to be a uniquely large and dark-maned subspecies. This overview surveys genetic work on museum spec…

Smilodon, the famous sabertoothed cat of the Americas, is known from abundant fossils such as those at the La Brea tar pits, but its DNA has been difficult to recover from warm-climate deposits. This…

Recovering DNA from extinct cats and historical museum specimens requires specialized techniques to cope with degraded, fragmented, and contaminated genetic material. This overview surveys how researc…

The cave lion, Panthera spelaea, ranged across Ice Age Eurasia and Beringia and is known from abundant remains and even mummified cubs preserved in permafrost. This overview surveys ancient-DNA studie…

Genomic studies have revealed that cat evolution is not a clean branching tree but a network shaped by repeated hybridization. This overview synthesizes evidence that lineages within Panthera and else…

Mitochondrial DNA, maternally inherited and abundant in old specimens, has been central to reconstructing cat history. This overview surveys how researchers define and use maternal haplogroups, includ…

As feline CKD advances, reduced renal production of erythropoietin, along with iron dysregulation, inflammation, and shortened red cell survival, causes nonregenerative anemia that worsens weakness an…

Captive big cats commonly require dental procedures, especially for fractured canine teeth, and these interventions demand careful general anesthesia given the size, danger, and physiologic vulnerabil…

Camera collars turn a tracked animal into a first-person observer, recording short video or still bursts that reveal behavior invisible to GPS dots. This overview describes how researchers have mounte…

Anthrax, caused by the spore-forming bacterium Bacillus anthracis, periodically kills wildlife in African ecosystems, and lions and other scavenging felids become exposed by feeding on infected herbiv…

Cities concentrate food in forms that wildlife can exploit, from garbage and compost to pet food, livestock, abundant commensal rodents and feral animals, and these anthropogenic subsidies underpin ma…

Urban noise from traffic, construction and human activity can mask acoustic cues, induce stress and alter the behaviour of wildlife, including felids that rely on hearing for hunting and vigilance. Th…

A monoclonal antibody targeting nerve growth factor, a key mediator of chronic pain, was developed as a long-acting injectable treatment for the pain of feline osteoarthritis, offering a novel mechani…

Even as predators, cats must avoid being killed, and anti-predator behaviour shapes their activity and space use. This overview surveys research on vigilance, refuge use, and avoidance in domestic and…

Antibody titer testing measures a cat's existing immunity to diseases such as panleukopenia and can inform decisions about whether revaccination is needed, supporting individualized protocols that avo…

A growing body of work links sublethal anticoagulant rodenticide exposure to severe mange in urban bobcats and mountain lions, implicating chemical immunosuppression as the hidden driver. This overvie…

A survey of how restoring large cats to systems where they were lost can rekindle anti-predator behavior in prey and reinstate top-down effects. Where prey have lived without predators, they may becom…

Many cats climb readily, and some are highly arboreal. This overview surveys the biomechanics of climbing: the use of sharp recurved claws for grip, limb and joint mobility for negotiating branches, b…

The story of how cats joined human society blends zooarchaeology with molecular genetics. This overview surveys evidence from early Neolithic Cyprus, where a cat was buried beside a human roughly nine…

Molecular studies consistently show that African leopards, despite occupying a vast and varied continent, harbor relatively shallow genetic structure compared with the deep splits separating Asian for…