🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Ambush predators must judge the distance to prey accurately before striking, and pupil shape can influence the depth cues available. This overview surveys the proposal that vertical-slit pupils create…

A major application of step-selection analysis is predicting landscape connectivity by converting estimated selection coefficients into a resistance surface, a map of how difficult each location is fo…

The domestic cat traces to a desert-adapted wild ancestor, and this overview reviews how that heritage shapes its water physiology today. Descended from the African wildcat of arid regions, domestic c…

Long-term study of pumas in the deserts of the American Southwest illuminated how these cats persist in arid mountains and how their populations function as sources and sinks. This overview synthesize…

Lions in the Kalahari and Namib regions survive in arid environments with sparse, dispersed prey and little surface water. This overview synthesizes studies showing how these lions range over enormous…

This overview synthesises the theory and practice of compensating farmers for livestock killed by big cats as a tolerance-building tool. It reviews recurring design challenges: verifying claims to pre…

Whiskers respond not only to direct contact but to subtle movements of air, allowing cats to sense nearby objects and motion without touching them. This overview surveys how vibrissae detect air curre…

Few cats are harder to study than the Andean cat, and this overview reviews the methods used to detect it. Its rarity, remote high-altitude habitat, and similarity to the sympatric Pampas cat long mad…

A core prediction of climate change is that mountain species will shift upslope, and detecting such shifts in elusive cats is a methodological challenge. This overview surveys the evidence and approac…

Mice communicate using ultrasonic vocalizations well above the human hearing range, and these calls fall squarely within what cats can detect. This overview surveys the intersection of rodent ultrason…

Comparative and population genomics allow researchers to find genes shaped by natural selection in cats, revealing the molecular basis of their predatory adaptations. This overview surveys the methods…

A foundational concept across camera-trap science is that animals present at a site are often not photographed, so raw detections undercount true occurrence and abundance. This overview surveys why de…

This overview reviews the array of measures tested to reduce tiger attacks on people in the Sundarbans, including the famous face-masks worn on the back of the head to exploit tigers' reluctance to at…

Cheetah mothers bring live prey to their cubs and release it, apparently providing opportunities to practise capturing and killing. This overview surveys field research on how cubs develop hunting com…

The reflective tapetum is not fully mature at birth, and its development parallels the broader maturation of the kitten visual system. This overview surveys what is known about how the tapetum forms a…

The familiar reaction to catnip does not appear until a kitten is several months old, making it a developmentally timed sensory behavior. This overview surveys the onset of the catnip response, which…

A survey of the three-way interactions among tigers, leopards and dholes, the dominant predators of South and Southeast Asian forests. These species partition a shared ungulate community by prey size…

Diabetic ketoacidosis is a life-threatening complication of feline diabetes in which insulin deficiency and counter-regulatory hormones drive ketone production, metabolic acidosis, dehydration, and el…

Detecting Mycobacterium bovis and related mycobacteria in wild carnivores is notoriously difficult, complicating both research and management. This overview surveys the diagnostic toolkit applied to f…

Wild cats span a spectrum of daily activity, from strongly nocturnal to crepuscular, diurnal, or flexibly cathemeral, and camera-trap timestamps are the primary tool for documenting these patterns at…

Within Colombo, fishing cats exploit a diet centred on fish but extending to rodents, birds, reptiles and human-associated prey available in city wetlands and gardens. This overview synthesises scat a…

Studies of leopard diet around Mumbai and across rural Maharashtra consistently find heavy reliance on domestic animals, particularly free-ranging dogs, alongside livestock, feral pigs, rodents and sm…

Leopards have perhaps the broadest diet of any large cat, recorded eating a vast array of species from large antelope to rodents, birds, reptiles, and invertebrates. This overview synthesizes scat and…

Jaguars have one of the most diverse diets of any big cat, recorded preying on dozens of species. This overview synthesizes scat and kill studies documenting how jaguar diet ranges from large mammals…

An overview of how co-occurring small felids divide prey to coexist, a less-studied counterpart to big-cat guild ecology. Where species such as ocelots, margays, oncillas, jungle cats, leopard cats an…

Controlling blood phosphorus through dietary restriction and phosphate binders is a cornerstone of CKD management in cats, supported by evidence that phosphorus retention drives mineral and bone disor…

A cat digestive tract reflects its meat diet, and this overview reviews how carnivore gut anatomy suits processing animal tissue. Cats have a relatively short, simple intestine compared with herbivore…

Cats walk on their toes, a digitigrade posture that lengthens the effective limb and changes the geometry of force transmission. This overview reviews how toe-walking affects stride length, speed pote…

The funnel shape of the cat's pinna collects sound and boosts sensitivity in the direction it faces, providing directional acoustic gain. This overview surveys how the pinna concentrates sound energy…

Sabertoothed cats are often divided into dirk-toothed forms with long, narrow canines and scimitar-toothed forms with shorter, broader, serrated canines, and this overview reviews the functional and e…