🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

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…

Distinguishing a true wildcat from a tabby domestic cat or hybrid is a practical taxonomic challenge with conservation stakes. This overview describes the morphological characters used, including a bu…

Accurately confirming and dating pregnancy in cats supports both clinical care and reproductive research. This overview surveys methods used to diagnose feline pregnancy, including abdominal palpation…

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…

When a cat ovulates without conceiving, the resulting corpora lutea secrete progesterone and produce a pseudopregnancy, a non-fertile luteal phase shorter than true gestation. This overview surveys th…

Purring is not unique to the domestic cat, and its distribution across felids has long been used to divide the family. This overview surveys the traditional contrast between purring cats, which cannot…

Some of the founding experiments of comparative psychology used cats in puzzle boxes to study how animals learn to escape confinement. This overview surveys the historical work in which cats gradually…

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,…

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…

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…

Cats communicate and organise their world through scent, marking with urine spray, facial rubbing, scratching and other signals, and the ability to perform and perceive these behaviours matters for we…

Felids scratch trees and other surfaces and create ground scrapes that combine visual marks with scent from glands in the paws. This overview surveys research on the marking function of scratching acr…

Cats living in temperate climates often show seasonal patterns of reproduction, with estrus and breeding concentrated in particular times of year, whereas tropical species may cycle year-round. This o…

Some female felids ovulate or become reproductively receptive with few outward behavioral signs, a phenomenon called silent or behavioral estrus that complicates breeding management. This overview sur…

Although often called solitary, domestic cats display a flexible social organisation that depends heavily on the distribution of food and shelter. This overview synthesises decades of observation show…

Domestic cats are facultatively social and did not evolve to share territory with unrelated individuals, so multi-cat households can generate chronic social stress that manifests as behaviour and heal…

Although often considered solitary, cats form social groups under abundant resources, and this overview surveys research on the structure of feral colonies. It examines how colonies typically center o…

Pinpointing the direction of a sound is essential for a predator that hunts partly by ear, and cats are skilled localizers. This overview surveys studies of feline sound localization acuity, which com…

How many species the wildcat complex contains has shifted with new evidence and species concepts. This overview traces the debate from treating all wildcats as one species, Felis silvestris, with many…

Although cats are classically described as induced ovulators, accumulating evidence shows that some domestic cats ovulate spontaneously without mating, particularly under certain social and environmen…

Serological and molecular surveys of wild felid populations have documented widespread infection with species-specific lentiviruses related to FIV, often at high prevalence in lions and pumas, general…

Beyond domestic cats, wild felids such as bobcats and pumas sustain natural sylvatic cycles of Toxoplasma, shedding oocysts that infect wild prey and contribute to environmental contamination. This ov…

Genetic and archaeological evidence converge on the African or Near Eastern wildcat, Felis lybica, as the sole wild ancestor of all domestic cats. This overview explains how the foundational phylogeog…

The Asiatic or Indian desert wildcat, often classified as Felis lybica ornata, ranges across Central and South Asia in arid and semi-arid habitats. This overview reviews its taxonomic placement within…

The Felis lineage contains the domestic cat and its closest wild relatives, including the European wildcat, the African and Near Eastern wildcat, the sand cat, the jungle cat, the black-footed cat, an…

The wildcat complex is among the most taxonomically debated felid groups because of its broad range, clinal variation, and entanglement with the domestic cat. This overview surveys the complex's struc…

One of the most robust axes of feline personality is a bold-to-shy or confident-to-fearful continuum that shapes how cats respond to novelty, strangers, and handling. This overview surveys research on…

Roughly two-thirds of domestic cats display a stereotyped response to catnip, sniffing, licking, rolling, and rubbing, triggered by the compound nepetalactone acting through the olfactory and vomerona…

A devastating outbreak of feline infectious peritonitis in a captive cheetah facility, with mortality far exceeding that seen in domestic cats, became a landmark case linking genetic uniformity to dis…

The tabby patterns of cats, mackerel stripes versus blotched swirls, arise from the interaction of genes that establish a prepattern in the developing skin and then translate it into dark and light ha…