🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Cub survival is the demographic linchpin of lion populations and is highly variable. This overview synthesizes long-term studies showing that the majority of cubs die before independence from causes i…

Lion cub survival is shaped by the communal creche, in which synchronously breeding females pool and defend their young. This overview surveys research on how creche formation buffers cubs against sta…

The Andean cat holds deep cultural significance for Andean peoples, and this overview reviews how that intersects with conservation. The cat features in traditional Andean belief as a sacred animal as…

Long-term coexistence between people and leopards in human-dominated India rests partly on social, cultural and religious dimensions that shape tolerance. This overview surveys social-science research…

Cats rarely face climate change in isolation; it interacts with habitat loss, fragmentation, hunting, disease, and conflict to produce cumulative impacts greater than any single threat. This overview…

This overview surveys the postcranial anatomy of Miracinonyx and the adaptations for high-speed running that earned it the cheetah-like label. Especially in Miracinonyx trumani, the limbs are elongate…

This overview examines the distinctive postcranial skeleton of Homotherium, whose elongated forelimbs, shorter hindlimbs, and digitigrade stance give it a sloping, hyena-like build very different from…

Dark adaptation is the process by which an eye recovers sensitivity after exposure to bright light, as pigment regenerates and neural gain rises. This overview surveys what is known about the time cou…

As awareness of light pollution grows, planners increasingly consider wildlife-sensitive lighting and the preservation of dark corridors to maintain connectivity for nocturnal animals. This overview s…

While remote darting is essential for immobilizing dangerous felids, the dart itself can cause injury, including muscle trauma, infection at the injection site, bone impact, or, rarely, penetration of…

Much camera-trap research occurs on Indigenous and community lands, raising questions of consent, benefit-sharing, and who owns and controls the resulting data. This overview surveys the principles of…

The mackerel-striped pattern is ancestral in cats, while the swirled blotched tabby is a recent variant produced by mutations in the Taqpep gene. This overview examines how ancient DNA and historical…

Dead-reckoning reconstructs an animal's detailed path between sparse GPS fixes by integrating heading from a magnetometer with speed inferred from acceleration, producing a continuous trajectory at su…

Declawing of big cats, performed in some private and entertainment settings to reduce injury risk to handlers, removes the last bone of each toe and has lasting welfare consequences. This overview sur…

Declawing, or onychectomy, removes not just the claw but the terminal toe bone, and this overview surveys its biomechanical and welfare consequences. Because the claw grows from that bone, eliminating…

Large serosurveys document a substantial decline in FeLV prevalence across many countries since the 1980s, attributed to testing, vaccination, removal of infected cats from breeding and group settings…

A cat's sense of smell can diminish with age, and because olfaction strongly influences feline appetite, this decline can affect eating. This overview surveys age-related changes in feline olfaction a…

Emerging deep-learning methods aim to automate not just species classification but individual identification, re-identifying specific cats from their coat patterns to build capture histories for captu…

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…

Conservation managers must decide which populations to treat as separate units for protection, breeding, and translocation, and genetics provides the primary evidence. This overview surveys the concep…

Home ranges are often summarized by isopleths, contours of the utilization distribution enclosing a chosen percentage of use, with the full range commonly set at 95 percent and the core at 50 percent.…

Recognizing two leopard cat species raises the practical question of where the boundary between them lies. This overview examines how the mainland leopard cat, Prionailurus bengalensis, and the Sunda…

Because enforcement alone struggles to stop trade driven by persistent consumer demand, conservationists increasingly invest in demand-reduction interventions aimed at changing the behavior of people…

Demodex mites live in the skin of many mammals, usually harmlessly, but can proliferate to cause demodectic mange when host immunity falters. This overview surveys reports of demodicosis in wild and c…

Beyond individual illness, bovine tuberculosis may reshape lion populations and social behavior over time. This overview synthesizes research and modeling on how chronic TB reduces survival and reprod…

Reliable anthropogenic food can boost carnivore survival and reproduction, producing higher densities and altered population dynamics in subsidised urban environments. This overview synthesises resear…

Female cats select sheltered den sites to give birth and protect altricial young during their most vulnerable weeks. This overview surveys how felid mothers choose dens that provide concealment and th…

The same species that lives solitarily where prey is scarce forms dense colonies where food concentrates, and this flexibility makes the cat a model for density-dependent sociality. This overview surv…

This overview surveys dental microwear texture analysis, a method that examines microscopic wear features on tooth surfaces to infer what an animal ate shortly before death. In fossil cats, the techni…

This overview examines one of the defining trends in felid evolution: the progressive loss and simplification of teeth from the relatively full dentition of Proailurus to the highly reduced tooth row…