🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Body condition and nutrition strongly influence how wild felids cope with infection, with stress and malnutrition often tipping tolerated pathogens into disease. This overview surveys the link between…

Because cats rely heavily on smell for hunting, social communication and exploring their world, scent-based enrichment is a natural fit for felid welfare. This overview surveys studies adding novel od…

An overview of how the prey a cat takes changes as it grows, learns to hunt and gains the size and strength to subdue larger prey. Young felids first depend on prey provided by their mother, then prac…

Potent opioids, including butorphanol and ultra-potent agents in some protocols, are incorporated into big-cat anesthesia to enhance analgesia and immobilization, often combined with dissociatives and…

An overview of how energetic costs and benefits shape the prey sizes big cats prefer to hunt. Optimal foraging predicts that predators target prey large enough to yield a high energy return per kill y…

Oral vaccination, delivered through baits, has been used to immunize wildlife reservoirs against rabies and is considered for other diseases, with indirect benefits for exposed felids. This overview s…

The concept of pathogen pollution describes the human-mediated introduction of pathogens into new host populations, a recurring driver of disease in wild felids. This overview surveys how activities s…

Anesthetizing large felids carries substantial physiologic risk, and monitoring of oxygenation, ventilation, heart rate, blood pressure, and temperature is essential, with pulse oximetry, capnography,…

Operant conditioning with positive reinforcement underpins modern husbandry training, allowing cats to cooperate in shifting, crating, weighing and medical procedures. This overview surveys the learni…

A survey of how felids exploit the seasonal pulse of newborn ungulates, a period of high vulnerability that can dominate annual recruitment losses. During calving and fawning seasons, abundant, hidden…

A survey of the strong, general relationship between the abundance of prey and the density of the carnivores that depend on them, a cornerstone of predator ecology. Across species and systems, predato…

Modern zoos run structured preventive medicine programs for captive felids encompassing routine health monitoring, parasite control, vaccination, nutritional management, dental care, and increasingly…

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…

An overview of the behavioral defenses ungulates and other prey deploy against felid predators, from vigilance scanning to alarm signaling and habitat avoidance. Because cats are stealthy ambush hunte…

A felid’s diet largely determines its parasite burden, as many worms and protozoa are acquired by eating infected prey. This overview surveys how prey-mediated transmission shapes the parasitic fauna…

A methodological survey of the indices used to measure whether felids prefer or avoid prey relative to availability, including the Jacobs index, Ivlev's electivity and related measures central to the…

Progestin-based contraceptives have been used to suppress reproduction in captive cats, but concerns about side effects have shaped their use. This overview surveys the application of progestin contra…

How keepers interact with dangerous captive carnivores spans a spectrum from free contact, sharing space with the animal, to protected contact, where a barrier always separates human and cat. This ove…

Diseases of the reproductive tract, such as the uterine infection pyometra, affect fertility and welfare in domestic and nondomestic cats. This overview surveys reproductive tract pathology in felids,…

Deciding when a chronically ill or aged big cat's welfare no longer justifies continued life is among the most difficult tasks in captive felid care. This overview surveys structured quality-of-life a…

Vaccines against feline immunodeficiency virus exist for domestic cats but raise complex questions when considered for wild felids harboring their own endemic lentiviruses. This overview surveys the i…

Rabies, an almost invariably fatal lyssavirus infection, occasionally strikes wild felids exposed through bites from infected dogs, jackals or other wildlife reservoirs. This overview surveys document…

Effective rabies control depends on surveillance that spans the carnivore community, since the virus circulates among dogs, jackals, mongooses, foxes and bat reservoirs that all interface with felids.…

A central question in distemper ecology is how a virus historically associated with dogs repeatedly jumps into cats. This overview surveys research on the molecular basis of canine distemper virus hos…

Remote drug delivery using dart guns and pole syringes enables chemical immobilization of dangerous or free-ranging felids from a safe distance, a foundational technique for field and zoo capture. Suc…

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…

Male reproductive success in cats depends on the ability to acquire and defend mating opportunities, which often declines with age as competitive ability wanes. This overview surveys how aging affects…

In some social or group-housed felids, subordinate individuals may experience reduced reproduction through social or physiological suppression. This overview surveys reproductive suppression in cats,…

Despite decades of study, major gaps remain in understanding disease in wild felids, particularly for less-studied species and regions. This overview surveys the priorities and unanswered questions in…