🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

In many Asian forests tigers share the landscape with leopards and packs of dholes, the Asiatic wild dog, forming a guild that partitions prey and space. This overview synthesizes research on how thes…

Modified-live canine distemper vaccines, while protective in dogs, have caused vaccine-induced disease when given to some nondomestic carnivores, complicating efforts to protect wild felids. This over…

Because garbage and organic waste feed both carnivores directly and the rodent and dog populations they prey upon, waste management is a powerful indirect lever on urban carnivore abundance and confli…

This overview examines the downsides and trade-offs of deploying livestock-guarding dogs against big cats, balancing their depredation-reducing benefits. It synthesises research on dog welfare, exposu…

The cheetah is the classic exception to feline claw retraction: its claws remain largely exposed, blunt, and dog-like. This overview reviews the functional reasoning that this trades the sharp, sheath…

Controlling rabies in its wildlife and domestic reservoirs indirectly protects wild felids that are spillover victims of the disease. This overview surveys rabies control strategies relevant to felid…

This synthesis reviews the conservation standing of the Andean cat, regarded as one of the most threatened cats in the Americas owing to its rarity, small fragmented populations, prey specialization,…

This synthesis reviews the conservation standing of Pallass cat, reassessed in recent years as lower risk than once feared but still subject to significant, localized threats. It weighs pressures incl…

This synthesis reviews the conservation standing of the kodkod, regarded as facing elevated risk owing to its small range, forest dependence, and exposure to habitat loss in the temperate forests of C…

This synthesis reviews the conservation standing of the rusty-spotted cat, historically considered at some risk owing to habitat loss but increasingly understood to be more widespread and adaptable th…

This synthesis reviews the conservation standing of the sand cat, generally assessed as low risk but acknowledged to rest on sparse data. It weighs threats including habitat degradation from grazing a…

This study examined the large domestic dog population living around the Serengeti to test whether dogs sustained the canine distemper virus that spilled into lions and other carnivores. Through serosu…

S. Cleaveland, M. G. J. Appel, W. S. K. Chalmers, et al. · Veterinary Microbiology · 2000

Merola and colleagues tested whether cats engage in social referencing, looking to a human for emotional information about an ambiguous situation. Cats and owners were presented with a potentially ala…

Isabella Merola, Marta Lazzaroni, Sarah Marshall-Pescini, Emanuela Prato-Previde · Animal Cognition · 2015

When confronted with an ambiguous, potentially frightening object such as a noisy fan, do cats look to their owner for guidance? In this experiment owners reacted to the object with either a positive…

Isabella Merola and colleagues · Animal Cognition · 2015

This experimental study assessed which domesticated species could be infected by SARS-CoV-2. The authors found that cats were highly susceptible: inoculated cats replicated the virus efficiently in th…

J. Shi, Z. Wen, G. Zhong, et al. · Science · 2020

Surveying owners of over two thousand pet cats, researchers used questionnaire ratings to identify five reliable personality dimensions, dubbed the Feline Five: neuroticism, extraversion, dominance, i…

Carla Litchfield and colleagues · PLOS ONE · 2017

Schaller's monograph is the foundational field study of lion ecology and one of the most thorough predator-prey investigations ever conducted. Over years in the Serengeti, he documented lion social st…

Schaller, G.B. · University of Chicago Press · 1972

Lipinski and colleagues used a panel of genetic markers to characterize the population structure of cat breeds and worldwide random-bred cats. They found that most modern cat breeds are relatively rec…

Monika J. Lipinski, Lutz Froenicke, Kathryn C. Baysac, et al. · Genomics · 2008

Periquet, Fritz and Revilla reviewed the full breadth of interactions between lions and spotted hyenas, the two dominant large carnivores of African savannas. They synthesized evidence on kleptoparasi…

Periquet, S., Fritz, H. & Revilla, E. · Biological Reviews · 2015

Miklosi and colleagues compared how cats and dogs use and respond to human visual communicative signals, particularly pointing gestures indicating hidden food. Both species could follow human pointing…

Adam Miklosi, Peter Pongracz, Gabriella Lakatos, Jozsef Topal, Vilmos Csanyi · Journal of Comparative Psychology · 2005