🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

This study conducted the first range-wide genetic analysis of the snow leopard and proposed dividing the species into three subspecies. Using noninvasive samples collected across the snow leopard's mo…

Janecka JE, Zhang Y, Li D, et al. · Journal of Heredity · 2017

This overview surveys Acinonyx pardinensis, a large extinct cheetah that ranged across Eurasia during the Pliocene and Pleistocene. Considerably bigger than the living cheetah, sometimes approaching t…

Leopards are among the most adaptable big cats, persisting from deserts to forests to the edges of cities, and this overview synthesizes telemetry research on their ranging across African landscapes.…

Having passed through an extreme bottleneck, the Amur leopard carries very low genetic diversity and shows signs of inbreeding, raising concerns about long-term viability even as numbers recover. This…

Amur leopards rely chiefly on roe deer, sika deer, and other ungulates whose abundance, depressed by poaching and habitat degradation, limits leopard recovery in the cold forests of the Russian Far Ea…

The Andean cat is a rare, specialized felid of the high Andes and Patagonian steppe, dependent on rocky terrain and prey such as mountain vizcachas. This overview surveys what is known about its restr…

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, CITES, governs cross-border trade in wildlife, and the world's big cats are listed on its Appendix I, banning commercial international trad…

An overview of how molecular analysis of prey DNA in faeces is transforming the study of cat diets. By sequencing prey genetic material recovered from scats, researchers can identify prey to species w…

This overview examines Dinofelis, a leopard-to-jaguar-sized cat of the Pliocene and early Pleistocene placed among the Metailurini, whose moderately enlarged, flattened canines mark it as an intermedi…

Lentiviruses related to domestic-cat FIV circulate widely in wild felid species including lions, pumas, leopards, and others, often at high seroprevalence yet apparently with limited disease in their…

High-resolution GPS tracking combined with accelerometers and other biologgers has transformed the study of how felids behave near people, enabling fine-scale analysis of movement, activity, energetic…

An overview of how the advent of GPS telemetry transformed estimation of kill rates for solitary cats such as pumas, leopards and lynx. The approach identifies spatial clusters of frequent locations,…

The Global Snow Leopard and Ecosystem Protection Program, GSLEP, is an intergovernmental initiative uniting the twelve snow leopard range countries around a shared conservation agenda, including a goa…

This overview examines community ecotourism initiatives, notably the Himalayan Homestays program in Ladakh, designed to convert snow leopards from a liability into an economic asset for herding househ…

Namibia's communal conservancy program, which devolves rights to manage and benefit from wildlife to local communities, is among the most studied community-based conservation models and is credited wi…

This overview surveys Panthera gombaszoegensis, an extinct big cat of the Pleistocene of Europe and western Asia often nicknamed the European jaguar because of similarities to the living jaguar. Known…

Following the Bronx Zoo tigers, SARS-CoV-2 infections were confirmed in big cats at zoos and sanctuaries across multiple countries, including additional tigers, lions, snow leopards, pumas and others.…

Serosurveys consistently reveal high Toxoplasma exposure in wild felids, reflecting their role as both definitive hosts and predators of infected prey. This overview synthesizes prevalence patterns ac…

A survey of how cats do not take prey at random but select particular age and sex classes, with consequences for prey populations. Felids frequently kill disproportionately young, old or otherwise vul…

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…

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…

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…

Estimating snow leopard home ranges is especially vulnerable to the autocorrelation problem because dense GPS fixes from a slow-ranging mountain cat are highly correlated, and this overview examines t…

Researchers sometimes attract animals to cameras using food bait, scent lures, visual attractants, or scratching posts to increase detection rates and obtain better-posed, identifiable images. This ov…

Across the felid family, the capacity to flexibly adjust activity timing, space use, diet and risk responses largely determines which species can live near people. This overview synthesises evidence t…

Leopard cats occur not only in deep farmland but at the fringes of towns and suburbs across parts of Asia, suggesting considerable tolerance of human activity. This overview synthesises camera-trap an…

As apex predators, big cats can exert top-down control that ripples through ecosystems via trophic cascades. This overview synthesizes evidence that lions, tigers, leopards, pumas, and jaguars influen…

The caracal ranges widely across Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and into India, and this broad distribution has produced named subspecies and biogeographic questions. This overview surveys car…

African carnivores, including lions, leopards and cheetahs, host a rich diversity of blood-borne parasites that molecular surveys continue to uncover. This overview surveys the diversity of hemoparasi…

This overview synthesises how buffer-zone management and community forestry mediate human-tiger and human-leopard conflict around protected areas in Nepal and India. It reviews programs that share par…