🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

How much better do cats really see in the dark than people? This overview surveys behavioral and physiological comparisons, which generally credit cats with the ability to detect light at intensities…

Dogs are famed for their sense of smell, and comparing them with cats puts feline olfaction in perspective. This overview surveys estimates that cats possess a large but somewhat smaller repertoire of…

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…

Silver vine and catnip both elicit the characteristic feline rubbing and rolling response, but they differ in potency and in which cats they affect. This overview surveys comparisons showing that silv…

From leopards in Mumbai to pumas in Los Angeles, caracals in Cape Town and fishing cats in Colombo, a remarkable diversity of felids inhabits the worlds cities, offering a comparative window on urban…

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…

An overview of the long-running question of whether cougar predation adds to or merely substitutes for other deer mortality. If predation is compensatory, cats mainly take individuals that would have…

This overview surveys evidence for ecological interaction and competition between the sabertooth Smilodon fatalis and the dire wolf, the two most abundant large carnivores at Rancho La Brea. Researche…

Complete mitochondrial genomes have been sequenced for most cat species, providing a standardized dataset for phylogenetics, phylogeography, and species identification. This overview surveys the assem…

Several studies have tested how well cats exploit human-given cues, such as pointing, gazing, or tapping, to find hidden food in object-choice tasks. This overview surveys the range of cues cats can a…

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…

This overview examines why reconstructing the relationships among the living big cats has proven difficult, with different genes and analyses sometimes yielding conflicting trees. The lion, leopard, a…

Deafness is strongly associated with the dominant white coat gene in cats, particularly in blue-eyed white individuals, and this overview surveys the phenomenon and its biology. It examines how the wh…

As climate change shifts the distribution of suitable habitat, connectivity must allow species to track those changes by moving to newly suitable areas, adding a dynamic dimension to corridor planning…

As climate change shifts the distribution of suitable habitat, corridors that connect populations today may not align with where animals need to move tomorrow, and this overview examines how researche…

Recognizing two clouded leopard species reshaped conservation planning across Southeast Asia. This overview explains how the split meant that the Sunda clouded leopard, confined to Borneo and Sumatra,…

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…

Genetic tools have become central to small-cat conservation, and this overview reviews their applications. Non-invasive sampling of scats and hair allows researchers to confirm the presence of cryptic…

The Amur leopard, surviving in the Russian Far East and adjacent China, is one of the rarest cats, having dropped to a few dozen individuals. This overview surveys genetic studies documenting its very…

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…

The fishing cat is a wetland specialist of South and Southeast Asia, increasingly threatened by the loss and fragmentation of marshes and mangroves. This overview surveys the limited but growing genet…

At the northern edge of its range, the ocelot persists in southern Texas as a few small, isolated populations cut off from larger Mexican populations by development and roads. This overview surveys ge…

As lion numbers decline and ranges fragment, conservation genomics has become central to managing the species across protected areas and fenced reserves. This overview surveys how genome-wide data are…

The critically endangered Iberian lynx has been the focus of intensive conservation medicine within recovery programs combining captive breeding, reintroduction, and disease management. Veterinary con…

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…

With far more conservation need than funding, the controversial idea of conservation triage proposes deciding where to invest based on cost, feasibility, and likely return, potentially accepting that…

Cheetah mothers and cubs use distinctive vocal contact to maintain cohesion as they move across open landscapes. This overview surveys research on the bird-like chirp and other calls that reunite sepa…

This overview synthesises research on lion attacks on humans in rural southeastern Africa, particularly Tanzania and Mozambique, where some of the highest modern rates of fatal lion predation have bee…

Continuous and flash glucose monitoring systems, originally developed for humans and adapted for cats, use a small subcutaneous sensor to track interstitial glucose over days, providing detailed gluco…

Controlling reproduction is essential for managing captive cat populations within space and genetic limits, but contraceptive methods carry welfare and health considerations. This overview surveys opt…