🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

This overview surveys what the claw anatomy of sabertooth cats reveals about how they handled prey. Like living felids, machairodonts had retractile claws, but in robust dirk-toothed forms such as Smi…

Climate change is reshaping the distribution and intensity of wildlife disease, with implications for felids through effects on vectors, reservoirs and host stress. This overview surveys how warming a…

Climate change interacts with urbanisation to reshape the conditions felids face near cities, altering prey availability, water resources, heat exposure, fire regimes and the viability of corridors. T…

Climate change poses varied threats to the world's cats, and assessing which species and populations are most vulnerable is increasingly important for prioritization. This overview surveys research on…

Climate change can expand the range of pathogens, parasites, and disease vectors, with potential consequences for wild cat health. This overview surveys how warming may alter the distribution of tick-…

Felids are relatively susceptible to Yersinia pestis, and infection can progress to acute, severe and sometimes fatal disease, distinguishing cats from more resistant carnivores. This overview surveys…

Although cats are the definitive host, felids can also suffer clinical toxoplasmosis, particularly when immunocompromised or exposed to virulent strains. This overview surveys reports of disease in ca…

This overview reviews the comparatively understudied conflict between people and smaller wild cats, including clouded leopards, in Southeast Asian forest-agriculture mosaics. It synthesises scattered…

Southeast Asia harbors a rich diversity of poorly studied forest cats, from clouded leopards to marbled cats, leopard cats, and others, and this overview examines the sparse but growing movement resea…

Clouded leopards possess the largest canine teeth relative to skull size of any living cat, and this overview reviews the morphology and its implications. The long upper canines and wide gape have inv…

Wild felids rarely carry a single pathogen, and interactions among co-infecting agents can determine whether infection is benign or deadly. This overview surveys the concept of co-infection synergy in…

Cognitive enrichment challenges animals to solve problems for rewards, engaging mental faculties and providing a sense of control. This overview surveys the emerging use of cognitive enrichment for ca…

The African golden cat is notoriously variable in coat color, ranging from reddish-golden to grey, with spotted and nearly plain individuals, which historically caused taxonomic confusion. This overvi…

Light and noise rarely act alone; in cities they combine with human presence to create a degraded sensory landscape that wildlife must navigate. This overview synthesises research treating sensory pol…

Cities support large populations of commensal rodents fed by human waste, and these rodents form a critical prey subsidy for small and medium urban felids from bobcats to leopard cats and jungle cats.…

Lionesses that give birth around the same time pool their cubs into a communal creche, nursing and defending young cooperatively. This overview surveys how creches form following synchronized births,…

Understanding why some felids tolerate pathogens that sicken others requires comparing immune function across wild and domestic cats. This overview surveys comparative felid immunology, examining diff…

Feline immunodeficiency virus causes an AIDS-like syndrome in domestic cats yet has long been assumed benign in its wild hosts. This overview examines the evidence for and against that assumption, com…

From leopards in Mumbai to pumas in Los Angeles, caracals in Cape Town and fishing cats in Colombo, a remarkable diversity of felids inhabits the worlds cities, offering a comparative window on urban…

Identifying individual cats from their unique stripe, spot, or rosette patterns is the cornerstone of capture-recapture, and software increasingly assists this once wholly manual task. This overview s…

As climate change shifts the distribution of suitable habitat, corridors that connect populations today may not align with where animals need to move tomorrow, and this overview examines how researche…

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…

This overview examines the evolutionary relationships of Miracinonyx and the now well-supported conclusion that its cheetah-like form arose through convergence rather than common ancestry with the tru…

Across the cat family, similar coat phenotypes such as melanism, pale or white morphs, and spotted-to-striped pattern shifts have arisen repeatedly in different lineages. This overview surveys the evi…

The cheetah and the extinct American cheetah independently evolved a slender, long-limbed body built for high-speed pursuit, a striking case of convergence given their separate ancestries within the p…

Cooperation is rare among felids, concentrated in the social lion and in cheetah and feral-cat male coalitions, making the family a useful contrast for theories of cooperation. This overview surveys r…

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…

An overview of how social and grouping behavior in cats functions partly to defend kills against kleptoparasites and scavengers. In lions, larger groups retain carcasses against mobbing spotted hyenas…

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…