🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

This installment of the Hayward series quantified prey selection by African wild dogs, a key competitor of cheetahs and a frequent victim of intraguild predation by lions and hyenas. Using kill record…

Hayward, M.W., O'Brien, J., Hofmeyr, M. & Kerley, G.I.H. · Journal of Zoology · 2006

Part of Hayward's comparative prey-preference series, this study quantified cheetah prey selection across study sites by relating kill records to prey availability. Cheetahs preferentially took medium…

Hayward, M.W., Hofmeyr, M., O'Brien, J. & Kerley, G.I.H. · Journal of Zoology · 2006

A foundational quantitative analysis of what lions actually select to kill versus what is merely available. Hayward and Kerley compiled prey records from across Africa and weighted them against prey a…

Hayward, M.W. & Kerley, G.I.H. · Journal of Zoology · 2005

Though not a felid, the spotted hyena is the dominant competitor and kleptoparasite of African big cats, so its prey preferences are central to felid dynamics. Hayward compiled kill and diet records a…

Hayward, M.W. · Journal of Zoology · 2006

This work measured carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes in bone collagen from Rancho La Brea mammals, including the predators Smilodon and Panthera atrox alongside their herbivore prey. The isotopic si…

Joan Brenner Coltrain, John M. Harris, Thure E. Cerling, James R. Ehleringer, et al. · Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology · 2004

This study compared the outbred Serengeti lion population with the small, geographically isolated Ngorongoro Crater population, which descended from few founders and experienced inbreeding. The author…

Wildt DE, Bush M, Goodrowe KL, Packer C, Pusey AE, Brown JL, Joslin P, O'Brien SJ · Nature · 1987

Using decades of individual life-history records from wild lions and baboons, this study tested whether females experience a true post-reproductive lifespan analogous to human menopause. The authors f…

Packer C, Tatar M, Collins A · Nature · 1998

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.…

This overview synthesizes telemetry research on African lion movement and pride ranging, drawing on long-term projects such as the Oxford-led study in and around Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe. GPS co…

The worlds only wild Asiatic lions live in and around Gir in Gujarat, India, where their expanding population increasingly occupies agricultural land, villages and the periphery of towns. This overvie…

This overview surveys human-lion coexistence in India's Gir landscape, the last refuge of the Asiatic lion, where pastoralist Maldhari communities graze livestock within and around the protected fores…

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…

Cecil was a male lion fitted with a GPS collar as part of a long-term Oxford-led research project in and around Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe, whose illegal killing by a trophy hunter in 2015 drew wo…

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…

Hepatozoon is a tick-associated protozoan parasite, transmitted not by tick bite but by ingestion of infected ticks, that commonly infects wild felids including lions. This overview surveys the biolog…

This overview surveys Machairodus and its later, larger relative Amphimachairodus, big scimitar-toothed cats that dominated late Miocene predator guilds across Eurasia, Africa, and North America. Thes…

Bovine tuberculosis, caused by Mycobacterium bovis, established itself in Kruger National Park after spilling from cattle into African buffalo, and lions preying on infected buffalo became widely expo…

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 describes Natural Trap Cave in Wyoming, a deep sinkhole that acted as a pitfall for Pleistocene animals and accumulated a rich fossil assemblage including the American lion, the cheetah-…

P-22 was a male puma collared by the National Park Service after he made an improbable journey across two of Los Angeles's busiest freeways, the 405 and the 101, to settle in tiny Griffith Park beside…

P-22 became the most famous urban mountain lion in the world after crossing two of the busiest freeways in the United States to settle in Griffith Park, a small island of habitat surrounded by central…

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…

This overview surveys the taxonomy of the Eurasian cave lion and its immediate ancestors. The classic Late Pleistocene cave lion is usually called Panthera spelaea, while larger, earlier Middle Pleist…

This overview examines Proailurus, widely regarded as the earliest true cat, known principally from the late Oligocene and early Miocene of Europe, including the famous Quercy fissure fillings of Fran…

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…

African lions and other wild felids can be infected with Trypanosoma, tsetse-transmitted protozoan parasites better known for causing sleeping sickness in humans and nagana in livestock. This overview…

Complementing maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA, Y-chromosome markers trace paternal lineages and reveal male-specific patterns of dispersal and mating in cats. This overview surveys how feline Y…

Sylvatic plague, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, circulates among rodents in the American West, and mountain lions become exposed by preying on infected rodents and lagomorphs. This overview…