🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Captive big cats commonly require dental procedures, especially for fractured canine teeth, and these interventions demand careful general anesthesia given the size, danger, and physiologic vulnerabil…

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…

Pregnancy rates from artificial insemination in wild cats remain modest and variable, reflecting the biological and technical challenges of the procedure. This overview surveys reported success rates…

Modern welfare science increasingly seeks not just to minimise suffering but to promote positive emotional states, yet measuring positive affect in cats is challenging. This overview surveys approache…

Assisted reproductive technologies, including artificial insemination, semen and embryo cryopreservation, and in vitro fertilization, have been applied to felids to support captive breeding and conser…

Managing captive felid populations requires balancing genetic goals, such as retaining diversity, against demographic goals, such as maintaining stable numbers and age structure. This overview surveys…

Successful reproduction in captivity depends not only on physiology but on appropriate behavior, including mate recognition, courtship, and competent maternal care. This overview surveys how behaviora…

Behaviour offers a rich, non-invasive window into felid welfare, but interpreting it requires care. This overview surveys the behavioural signs used to assess captive cats: stereotypic pacing and rout…

Big cats arriving at sanctuaries from circuses, roadside zoos, private ownership or the pet trade often carry physical and psychological scars, including declawing, malnutrition, obesity, dental disea…

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…

Climate change can shift the balance between grassland, savanna, shrubland, and forest, transforming the habitat templates that different cats require. This overview surveys how projected biome shifts…

Sedentary captive cats fed energy-dense diets are prone to obesity, which carries serious welfare and health consequences. This overview surveys body-condition management in felids: the prevalence and…

Captive cats fed soft, processed diets commonly develop dental disease such as gingivitis, calculus and tooth fractures, whereas chewing on bone, hide and connective tissue provides natural abrasion a…

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…

This overview reviews the application of camera-trap surveys and spatially explicit capture-recapture methods to estimate big-cat density in human-dominated and conflict-prone landscapes. It synthesis…

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…

Capture myopathy, a potentially fatal syndrome of muscle damage arising from the stress, exertion, and physiologic derangement of capture and restraint, is a recognized risk when immobilizing wild fel…

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…

The catnip response, a heritable reaction to nepetalactone causing sniffing, rubbing, rolling and a euphoric-seeming state, occurs in many domestic cats and some non-domestic felids. This overview sur…

Chronic activation of the stress axis can suppress immunity, impair reproduction and contribute to disease, and several captive cat species show evidence of such chronic stress. This overview surveys…

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…

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…

Cognitive enrichment challenges animals to solve problems for rewards, engaging mental faculties and providing a sense of control. This overview surveys the emerging use of cognitive enrichment for ca…

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…

Cognition has been studied far less in cats than in primates, birds, or dogs, but a coherent picture is emerging across the felid family. This overview synthesises research on object permanence, spati…