🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Felid species differ in their vocal repertoires, and comparative bioacoustics has sought to map these differences onto phylogeny and ecology. This overview surveys work cataloguing call types across s…

This overview synthesises comparisons between conventional compensation (post-hoc payment for verified losses, often state- or NGO-funded) and insurance models (premium-based funds, frequently communi…

How tigers are classified directly affects how they are conserved. This overview explains the practical stakes of the subspecies debate: subspecies define studbook management, set boundaries for trans…

The Amur or Siberian tiger of the Russian Far East recovered from perhaps a few dozen animals in the mid-twentieth century to several hundred today, making it a natural experiment in bottleneck and re…

Controlling reproduction is essential for managing captive cat populations within space and genetic limits, but contraceptive methods carry welfare and health considerations. This overview surveys opt…

Managing the size and genetics of captive felid populations sometimes requires preventing reproduction in animals that are genetically overrepresented or surplus to program needs. This overview survey…

Cooperative care trains animals through positive reinforcement to participate voluntarily in medical procedures, replacing the stress and risk of immobilisation. This overview surveys how big cats are…

Captive tigers are managed cooperatively across institutions to maintain genetically healthy, self-sustaining populations as insurance against wild declines. This overview surveys how tiger breeding p…

In induced-ovulating felids the chance that mating triggers ovulation rises with the number and spacing of copulations, suggesting a threshold of cumulative stimulation that the female's neuroendocrin…

This overview synthesises how habitat corridors and connectivity shape big-cat conflict, focusing on the tension between maintaining predator movement and the conflict that arises where corridors pass…

Measuring whether a conservation intervention actually helped requires comparing outcomes against a credible counterfactual of what would have happened otherwise. This overview surveys quasi-experimen…

The most realistic forecasts of cat futures combine climate change with land-use change, since for many forest cats habitat conversion is the faster, larger threat. This overview surveys how integrate…

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed a web of animal infections, with cats among the susceptible species alongside mink, ferrets and others. This overview surveys cross-species SARS-CoV-2 dynamics relevant…

Small managed felid populations gradually lose genetic diversity through drift and the death of founders, and cryopreservation offers a way to slow this erosion. This overview surveys how banking game…

Cats rarely face climate change in isolation; it interacts with habitat loss, fragmentation, hunting, disease, and conflict to produce cumulative impacts greater than any single threat. This overview…

While remote darting is essential for immobilizing dangerous felids, the dart itself can cause injury, including muscle trauma, infection at the injection site, bone impact, or, rarely, penetration of…

Declawing of big cats, performed in some private and entertainment settings to reduce injury risk to handlers, removes the last bone of each toe and has lasting welfare consequences. This overview sur…

This overview synthesises scholarship that seeks to define coexistence as a positive conservation goal distinct from the mere absence of conflict. It reviews frameworks conceptualising coexistence as…

Demodex mites live in the skin of many mammals, usually harmlessly, but can proliferate to cause demodectic mange when host immunity falters. This overview surveys reports of demodicosis in wild and c…

This overview synthesises the theory and practice of compensating farmers for livestock killed by big cats as a tolerance-building tool. It reviews recurring design challenges: verifying claims to pre…

This overview reviews the array of measures tested to reduce tiger attacks on people in the Sundarbans, including the famous face-masks worn on the back of the head to exploit tigers' reluctance to at…

A survey of the three-way interactions among tigers, leopards and dholes, the dominant predators of South and Southeast Asian forests. These species partition a shared ungulate community by prey size…

Captive big cats have become subjects of cognitive testing that reveals their learning abilities and informs enrichment. This overview surveys research using touchscreen and apparatus-based discrimina…

For tiny, isolated felid populations, infectious disease can pose an extinction-level threat that compounds genetic and demographic vulnerabilities. This overview surveys how disease drives extinction…

The endangered Amur (Siberian) tiger has been the subject of disease surveillance that uncovered cases of canine distemper virus infection causing neurologic disease and abnormal behavior in wild tige…

Captive felids in zoos and sanctuaries require systematic disease surveillance both for their own health and as sentinels for emerging threats. This overview surveys health monitoring in captive cat c…

Tigers, reduced to small, fragmented populations, face disease as one of several extinction pressures, most notably canine distemper documented in Amur tigers. This overview surveys the spectrum of di…

How young tigers leave their natal areas and establish their own territories determines the structure and persistence of populations. This overview synthesizes studies showing that subadult females of…

Habitat corridors that allow subadult cats to move between core areas are central to maintaining gene flow and demographic exchange in fragmented landscapes. This overview surveys research on how conn…

This overview synthesises the widely replicated finding that proximity to forest or natural cover strongly predicts big-cat depredation on livestock, with attacks declining as distance from the forest…