🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

This overview surveys Panthera palaeosinensis, an early pantherine from the Pliocene of China that has figured prominently in debates about the origins of big cats. Known from cranial and dental mater…

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.…

The Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool, known as SMART, is widely deployed in tiger reserves to make ranger patrols data-driven. This overview surveys research evaluating how recording patrol route…

Tiger range across Southeast Asia has collapsed dramatically, with several countries losing breeding populations to deforestation, infrastructure, and hunting. This overview surveys the regional patte…

The mangrove forests of the Sundarbans, shared by India and Bangladesh, support a unique tiger population adapted to a tidal, saline, swimming-intensive environment. This overview surveys research on…

Tigers are largely crepuscular and nocturnal, though their activity shifts with prey, temperature, and human presence. This overview synthesizes camera-trap and telemetry studies showing peaks of move…

Tiger cubs remain with their mother for an extended period, learning to hunt before dispersing to establish their own ranges. This overview surveys data on the age at which young tigers become indepen…

Expanding agricultural frontiers, soy and cattle in South America, oil palm in Southeast Asia, smallholder farming in Africa and Asia, are among the largest drivers of habitat loss for wild cats. This…

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…

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…

Big cats are often used as umbrella species, whose large area requirements mean that protecting them also protects many co-occurring species, and as flagship species, whose charisma mobilizes public s…

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…

Camera trapping has revolutionized how tiger populations are counted and studied. This overview synthesizes the methods built on individual stripe identification and capture-recapture statistics, incl…

Cat coats are often patterned for concealment, and this overview reviews the function and development of spots, stripes, and rosettes. Patterns such as the tiger stripes and leopard rosettes break up…

Canine distemper virus (CDV) is a morbillivirus closely related to measles and rinderpest that has expanded its host range far beyond dogs to infect lions, tigers, leopards, hyenas, seals and many oth…

Canine distemper has emerged as a documented threat to the endangered Amur (Siberian) tiger, with several tigers exhibiting abnormal, fearless behavior, neurological signs and death attributable to CD…

An overview of how the kills of large felids redistribute energy and nutrients through ecosystems. Carcasses and the cats' partly eaten remains create nutrient hotspots that fertilize soils and vegeta…

Circuit theory, which models animal movement as electrical current flowing across a resistance surface, has become a standard tool for mapping connectivity for wide-ranging cats. This overview surveys…

Climate change poses varied threats to the world's cats, and assessing which species and populations are most vulnerable is increasingly important for prioritization. This overview surveys research on…

The Sundarbans support both tigers and dense human populations dependent on the forest for fishing, honey collection, and wood, a coexistence stressed by climate change. This overview surveys how habi…

Climate refugia, places relatively buffered from climate change where species can persist, are an increasingly central organizing idea in conservation planning. This overview surveys the typology of r…

Tigers vary in ground color, stripe density, and body size across their range, and these traits were historically used to distinguish subspecies. This overview examines how reliable coat characters ar…

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…

The sequencing of cat genomes, beginning with the domestic cat and extending to tiger, lion, snow leopard, cheetah, and others, transformed felid systematics. This overview surveys how whole-genome da…

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…

Compensation and insurance schemes aim to offset the costs that big cats impose on livestock owners, reducing the incentive for retaliatory killing. This overview surveys research evaluating these fin…

Identifying individual cats from their unique stripe, spot, or rosette patterns is the cornerstone of capture-recapture, and software increasingly assists this once wholly manual task. This overview s…

How tigers are classified directly affects how they are conserved. This overview explains the practical stakes of the subspecies debate: subspecies define studbook management, set boundaries for trans…

The Amur or Siberian tiger of the Russian Far East recovered from perhaps a few dozen animals in the mid-twentieth century to several hundred today, making it a natural experiment in bottleneck and re…

Cooperative care trains animals through positive reinforcement to participate voluntarily in medical procedures, replacing the stress and risk of immobilisation. This overview surveys how big cats are…