🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

The fishing cat is a wetland-dependent felid of South and Southeast Asia, reliant on marshes, mangroves, and waterways that are among the habitats most exposed to climate change and human conversion.…

GPS collars do not always acquire a position, and crucially, the probability of failure is not random: dense canopy, steep terrain, and an animal resting in a cave or thicket all suppress fixes. This…

Not every adult tiger holds a territory; some live as floaters, occupying the gaps between residents and waiting for a vacancy. This overview synthesizes research on how these non-territorial individu…

Forensic science has become a powerful tool against the illegal trade in big cat parts, allowing seized skins, bones, and other products to be identified to species, and sometimes to population or ind…

As Sumatra's forests are carved into smaller blocks, maintaining connectivity among tiger populations becomes vital. This overview surveys how fragmentation isolates tiger subpopulations, the role of…

Captive big cats commonly fracture their large canine teeth through biting enclosure barriers, fighting, or chewing hard objects, exposing the pulp and causing pain and infection that require dental i…

This overview synthesises emerging priorities and frontiers in human-big cat conflict and coexistence research. It reviews calls for more rigorous impact evaluation, greater integration of social scie…

Accurate tiger numbers are central to conservation, and genetic capture-recapture using noninvasive samples complements camera trapping to estimate abundance and density. This overview surveys how DNA…

Genetic studies have become central to understanding how tiger populations are linked across fragmented landscapes. This overview synthesizes work using DNA from scats, hair, and tissue to measure gen…

Small populations accumulate deleterious mutations, the genetic load, but sustained inbreeding can also expose and remove the most harmful recessive variants through a process called purging. This ove…

Wildlife corridors aim to reconnect fragmented cat populations, and genetics provides a direct test of whether they actually restore gene flow. This overview surveys how landscape and population genet…

The South China tiger, considered the ancestral or stem population of modern tigers by some analyses, is likely extinct in the wild and survives only in a small, intensively managed captive population…

Several tiger populations vanished in the 20th century, including the Caspian, Bali, and Javan tigers, and ancient or historical DNA has been used to clarify their relationships. This overview surveys…

The Caspian tiger of Central and Western Asia went extinct in the twentieth century, but genetic analysis of museum specimens revealed a close relationship to the surviving Amur tiger, suggesting the…

Captive big cats now routinely reach advanced ages, and zoos have developed geriatric care programs addressing arthritis, dental disease, kidney and heart disease, cancer, and quality-of-life assessme…

Tigresses carry their young for roughly three to three and a half months and typically give birth to two to four cubs in a sheltered den. This overview surveys data on tiger gestation length, litter s…

Besides the white tiger, captive tigers occasionally display a golden or strawberry coloration with pale orange fur and faint cinnamon stripes, as well as theoretical combinations such as the snow-whi…

A survey of how prey use group living to reduce predation by cats, through the many-eyes effect, dilution, confusion and collective defense. Larger herds detect stalking felids sooner and dilute indiv…

An overview of how the spatial scale at which predators and prey use the landscape, their habitat domains, determines the strength and form of fear effects. When an ambush felid has a narrow, predicta…

Big cats select habitat at multiple scales, balancing the need for prey, cover for stalking, water, and shelter against the risks posed by competitors and humans. This overview synthesizes research sh…

The advent of GPS collars and biologging sensors has revolutionized the study of big-cat movement, hunting, and energetics. This overview synthesizes how high-resolution location data revealed kill si…

Tiger taxonomy has long been contested, with traditional schemes recognizing up to nine subspecies, several now extinct, while some genetic analyses and the Cat Classification Task Force proposed coll…

As tiger populations recover and human settlements press against reserves, conflict over livestock depredation and human casualties becomes a central conservation challenge. This overview surveys rese…

This overview reviews what the preserved hyoid bones of Smilodon suggest about the sounds the sabertooth may have made. In living cats, the structure of the hyoid apparatus correlates with whether a s…

Small, closed captive populations risk losing genetic diversity, raising the chance that deleterious recessive alleles pair up and reduce health, fertility and survival, a phenomenon known as inbreedi…

This overview synthesises research on how individual big cats develop man-eating behaviour, integrating evidence from Tsavo lions, Sundarbans and Champawat tigers, and Indian leopards. It reviews the…

As in lions, the takeover of a tigress's range by a new male can lead to the killing of her dependent cubs, after which she returns to breeding condition. This overview synthesizes field evidence for…

The Sundarbans lie in a cyclone-prone delta where climate change may intensify storms and surge, with consequences for tigers, prey, and people. This overview surveys how major cyclones reshape the fo…

Big cats not only compete for prey but kill one another, and intraguild predation shapes the structure of carnivore communities. This overview synthesizes research on how dominant cats such as lions a…

Tigers maintain a land-tenure system in which resident adults hold largely exclusive territories advertised and defended through scent marks, scrapes, and vocalisations. This overview surveys radio-te…