🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Reprogramming felid somatic cells into induced pluripotent stem cells offers a future route to generating gametes and preserving genetic diversity. This overview surveys early research on deriving ind…

In pumas, infanticide by males that have newly established tenure is a significant source of kitten mortality, and it shapes female reproductive timing and space use. This overview surveys research fr…

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…

Infanticide is a central force in lion social evolution, occurring when incoming males kill the cubs of their predecessors to accelerate females' return to breeding condition. This overview surveys re…

When a new coalition of males takes over a pride they commonly kill unweaned cubs, which brings females back into breeding condition sooner. This research overview surveys how lionesses respond by giv…

Roads, railways, dams, and energy infrastructure are expanding rapidly through tropical and montane cat habitat, fragmenting landscapes and opening forests to settlement and hunting. This overview sur…

Selective breeding concentrates not only desired traits but also disease-causing mutations, and this overview surveys inherited disorders documented across cat breeds. It covers conditions such as hyp…

Research showed that tight glycemic control, often using long-acting insulin glargine combined with a low-carbohydrate diet and initiated early in newly diagnosed cats, can achieve diabetic remission,…

No single indicator captures welfare reliably, so the field has moved toward integrated assessment combining multiple lines of evidence. This overview surveys how comprehensive welfare evaluation for…

Understanding behaviour and cognition is central to safeguarding feline welfare, and this overview surveys how research translates into care. It covers welfare frameworks that incorporate the cat's ev…

Linking genome resource banks to studbook management ensures that banked genetics are tracked and deployed to maximize population diversity. This overview surveys how biobanked samples are recorded al…

Effective conservation increasingly requires integrating disease information alongside genetic, demographic and habitat data in planning for felids. This overview surveys how disease data are incorpor…

Integrative taxonomy combines independent data classes (morphology, mitochondrial and nuclear DNA, ecology, biogeography, and behavior) to delimit taxa, and it has become the standard for resolving ca…

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…

Direct provisioning, whether intentional feeding of wildlife or unintentional access to pet food, livestock and garbage, can habituate felids to people and escalate conflict. This overview synthesises…

Aggression between cats sharing a home is a frequent and distressing problem, and this overview surveys its forms, causes and management. It examines types of inter-cat aggression including territoria…

Population bottlenecks that erode genetic diversity recur throughout felid history and interact powerfully with disease susceptibility. This overview surveys how bottlenecks, from the ancient cheetah…

The global distribution of cats was shaped by repeated intercontinental migrations across land bridges as sea levels fluctuated. This overview surveys how molecular phylogenies reconstructed at least…

When cats scratch surfaces, they leave more than visible marks; scent glands between the toes deposit chemical signals as well. This overview surveys the role of interdigital, or paw, glands in scent…

Transferring embryos of a rare cat into a more common related species as surrogate offers a way to produce offspring without risking the endangered female. This overview surveys interspecies embryo tr…

Felids share landscapes with other carnivores, and pathogens frequently move among species within these guilds, shaping disease dynamics. This overview surveys interspecific transmission among carnivo…

Intracytoplasmic sperm injection, in which a single sperm is injected directly into an egg, offers a route to fertilization when sperm are scarce or of poor quality. This overview surveys the developm…

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…

A survey of the lethal interactions between cats and dogs that share prey and space, a major structuring force in carnivore communities. Lions and hyenas kill wild dogs and cheetahs; pumas and coyotes…

In freeway-bounded puma populations around Los Angeles, killing of pumas by other pumas is an unusually frequent cause of death, a pattern biologists link to compressed home ranges and the inability o…

Genomic work on the Chinese mountain cat addressed whether it contributed to East Asian domestic cats and revealed instead a one-directional pattern. This overview explains that domestic cats in China…

Because domestic cats descend from wildcats and remain interfertile with them, introgression is a pervasive problem in wildcat taxonomy and conservation. This overview explains how gene flow from fera…

Do cats hold expectations about how physical objects behave, such as that unsupported objects fall? This overview surveys experiments probing feline intuitive physics, including studies using rattling…

Building on early comparative work, a series of studies probed how far cats can track objects hidden by invisible displacement, where an object is concealed in a container that is then moved behind a…

An iodine-restricted therapeutic diet offers a non-invasive management option for feline hyperthyroidism, exploiting the thyroid's dependence on dietary iodine to synthesize hormone; strictly limiting…