🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Cheetah cubs face exceptionally high mortality before independence, with predation by larger carnivores being the dominant cause in open habitats. This overview surveys evidence that lions and spotted…

This overview surveys evidence on reinforcing nighttime livestock enclosures (bomas, kraals) to prevent attacks by lions, leopards, hyenas, and cheetahs across East African rangelands. It covers the p…

The Asiatic cheetah depends on wild ungulates such as gazelle, wild sheep, and wild goat, whose populations have been depleted across central Iran by poaching, livestock competition, and habitat degra…

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…

Since the first lightly sequenced domestic cat genome, feline genomics has advanced to highly contiguous, chromosome-level assemblies for the domestic cat and an expanding set of wild species. This ov…

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…

Sustaining a sprint demands rapid oxygen delivery and gas exchange. This overview surveys what is known about the cheetah heart, lungs, blood, and airways in the context of brief, maximal exercise. Fe…

Roads fragment habitat, kill animals, and act as barriers to movement, making road ecology an important field for carnivore conservation. This overview surveys research on how roads affect big cats an…

Roads bisecting cheetah habitat in central Iran have become a notable cause of Asiatic cheetah deaths, a severe problem for a population so small that each loss is consequential. This overview surveys…

Whole-genome sequencing reveals long stretches where an individual inherited identical segments from both parents, called runs of homozygosity, which accumulate with inbreeding and small population si…

Wild cats communicate through scent-marking, spraying, scraping, cheek-rubbing, and clawing, leaving signals at conspicuous sites that they revisit, behavior that camera traps are uniquely positioned…

This overview surveys the cranial features of Miracinonyx that parallel those of the living cheetah, particularly modifications associated with high-speed running. Like Acinonyx, the more cursorial Mi…

Captive cheetahs frequently show ovarian inactivity, and social stress is among the proposed contributors to suppressed cycling and anovulation. This overview surveys research linking the social envir…

Female cheetahs lead solitary lives and, unlike territorial males, range over very large areas that track the movements of their prey. This overview synthesizes research, especially from the Serengeti…

An overview of how cheetahs reduce the risk of intraguild predation and kleptoparasitism by avoiding lions across space and time. As a subordinate cursorial predator, the cheetah suffers heavy cub mor…

Freezing and storing sperm is the most established form of felid biobanking, enabling the preservation and transport of male genetics. This overview surveys methods for cryopreserving cat sperm, inclu…

Across felid species and populations, the quality of sperm morphology tends to correlate with the level of genetic diversity, linking population history to reproductive function. This overview surveys…

The cheetah uses a rotary gallop with two airborne suspension phases per stride, one with limbs gathered and one with them extended. This overview examines how dorsoventral flexion and extension of th…

How does the cheetah reach gallop speeds that outpace other land mammals? This overview synthesises what is known about the interplay of stride length and stride frequency as cheetahs accelerate. Unli…

Different cat species carry different natural marks, tiger stripes, leopard and jaguar rosettes, ocelot chains, cheetah spots, and pattern-matching software exploits these to identify individuals semi…

Although cheetahs are genetically depleted overall, they are not uniform across their range, and several subspecies are recognized, including the southern and eastern African cheetahs, the northwest A…

Cheetah sprint mechanics are usually described on flat, open ground, but real hunts cross uneven, sloped, and variably firm terrain. This overview examines how substrate hardness, surface friction, sl…

The cheetah long, heavy, flattened tail is widely described as a rudder or counterbalance, but how exactly does it contribute to turning? This overview reviews the biomechanical reasoning and observat…

In endangered cats, individual temperament can determine reproductive success and welfare in managed-care programs. This overview surveys research extending the cheetah findings to other species, exam…

Many felids, especially genetically depauperate species like the cheetah, produce ejaculates with a high proportion of structurally abnormal sperm, a condition called teratospermia. This overview surv…

This overview synthesises the long-running program, pioneered by the Cheetah Conservation Fund in Namibia, that places Anatolian shepherd and Kangal guarding dogs with farmers to reduce cheetah and le…

The Asiatic cheetah, Acinonyx jubatus venaticus, survives only as a tiny relict population in Iran and is one of the most endangered cats on Earth. This overview examines its taxonomic recognition and…

The Asiatic cheetah, once ranging across southwest and central Asia, now survives only in Iran, where it numbers a critically small number of individuals scattered across vast arid landscapes. This ov…

A small, cryptic population of cheetahs survives across the Sahara and Sahel of Northwest Africa, representing a distinct and critically endangered lineage adapted to extreme desert conditions. This o…