🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Because female cats may mate with several males during a single estrus, individual litters can contain offspring sired by more than one father. This overview surveys evidence for multiple paternity ac…

Where several large cats share a landscape, they coexist by partitioning resources along axes of prey size, habitat, and activity. This overview synthesizes research across continents showing how tige…

Adult cheetah sprinting is well characterised, but how do cubs develop the coordination, muscle architecture, and skeletal proportions required for high-speed pursuit? This overview gathers what is kn…

Many captive female cheetahs experience extended periods without ovarian cyclicity, a major obstacle to sustaining captive populations. This overview surveys research characterizing ovarian inactivity…

Many captive cats, notably cheetahs and clouded leopards, undergo prolonged periods of ovarian inactivity in which they neither cycle nor ovulate, undermining breeding programs. This overview examines…

Individual cats differ consistently in boldness, fearfulness, aggressiveness and sociability, and these stable traits affect welfare, breeding success and how animals respond to husbandry. This overvi…

Cheetah cubs face exceptionally high mortality before independence, with predation by larger carnivores being the dominant cause in open habitats. This overview surveys evidence that lions and spotted…

This overview surveys evidence on reinforcing nighttime livestock enclosures (bomas, kraals) to prevent attacks by lions, leopards, hyenas, and cheetahs across East African rangelands. It covers the p…

The Asiatic cheetah depends on wild ungulates such as gazelle, wild sheep, and wild goat, whose populations have been depleted across central Iran by poaching, livestock competition, and habitat degra…

A survey of the anti-predator escape behaviors prey use once detected or attacked by cats and how they determine the outcome of a hunt. Prey employ rapid acceleration, unpredictable zig-zagging, stott…

Chronic kidney disease is a common cause of illness and death in aging captive big cats, paralleling its prominence in domestic cats and reflecting the longer lifespans achieved in managed care. Capti…

When males cooperate in coalitions, reproductive skew describes how evenly or unequally reproduction is divided among members. This overview surveys reproductive skew in felid coalitions, particularly…

Sustaining a sprint demands rapid oxygen delivery and gas exchange. This overview surveys what is known about the cheetah heart, lungs, blood, and airways in the context of brief, maximal exercise. Fe…

Roads bisecting cheetah habitat in central Iran have become a notable cause of Asiatic cheetah deaths, a severe problem for a population so small that each loss is consequential. This overview surveys…

Captive cheetahs frequently show ovarian inactivity, and social stress is among the proposed contributors to suppressed cycling and anovulation. This overview surveys research linking the social envir…

Female cheetahs lead solitary lives and, unlike territorial males, range over very large areas that track the movements of their prey. This overview synthesizes research, especially from the Serengeti…

An overview of how cheetahs reduce the risk of intraguild predation and kleptoparasitism by avoiding lions across space and time. As a subordinate cursorial predator, the cheetah suffers heavy cub mor…

Freezing and storing sperm is the most established form of felid biobanking, enabling the preservation and transport of male genetics. This overview surveys methods for cryopreserving cat sperm, inclu…

Across felid species and populations, the quality of sperm morphology tends to correlate with the level of genetic diversity, linking population history to reproductive function. This overview surveys…

The cheetah uses a rotary gallop with two airborne suspension phases per stride, one with limbs gathered and one with them extended. This overview examines how dorsoventral flexion and extension of th…

How does the cheetah reach gallop speeds that outpace other land mammals? This overview synthesises what is known about the interplay of stride length and stride frequency as cheetahs accelerate. Unli…

Although cheetahs are genetically depleted overall, they are not uniform across their range, and several subspecies are recognized, including the southern and eastern African cheetahs, the northwest A…

Cheetah sprint mechanics are usually described on flat, open ground, but real hunts cross uneven, sloped, and variably firm terrain. This overview examines how substrate hardness, surface friction, sl…

The cheetah long, heavy, flattened tail is widely described as a rudder or counterbalance, but how exactly does it contribute to turning? This overview reviews the biomechanical reasoning and observat…

Many felids, especially genetically depauperate species like the cheetah, produce ejaculates with a high proportion of structurally abnormal sperm, a condition called teratospermia. This overview surv…

This overview synthesises the long-running program, pioneered by the Cheetah Conservation Fund in Namibia, that places Anatolian shepherd and Kangal guarding dogs with farmers to reduce cheetah and le…

The Asiatic cheetah, Acinonyx jubatus venaticus, survives only as a tiny relict population in Iran and is one of the most endangered cats on Earth. This overview examines its taxonomic recognition and…

The Asiatic cheetah, once ranging across southwest and central Asia, now survives only in Iran, where it numbers a critically small number of individuals scattered across vast arid landscapes. This ov…

A small, cryptic population of cheetahs survives across the Sahara and Sahel of Northwest Africa, representing a distinct and critically endangered lineage adapted to extreme desert conditions. This o…

In South Africa, cheetahs persist in numerous small, fenced reserves too isolated to function as a natural population, so conservationists manage them collectively as a metapopulation by translocating…