🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Field immobilization of leopards and snow leopards presents distinctive challenges, including the elusive, often nocturnal behavior of these cats, rugged or high-altitude terrain, and extreme cold in…

This overview synthesises research on how individual big cats develop man-eating behaviour, integrating evidence from Tsavo lions, Sundarbans and Champawat tigers, and Indian leopards. It reviews the…

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…

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…

This overview synthesizes how GPS cluster methods have been applied across felid species to estimate how often cats kill and what they eat, turning location data into quantitative diet and predation-r…

A survey of how researchers locate and interpret felid kill sites and the biases that affect the resulting estimates of kill rate and prey composition. Field investigation of GPS clusters, snow-tracki…

A survey of the pervasive theft of kills within the African large-carnivore guild, where lions, spotted hyenas, leopards, cheetahs and wild dogs constantly contest carcasses. The direction and outcome…

This overview synthesises studies identifying which landscape and management variables predict where big cats kill livestock, a recurring quantitative question across conflict research. It reviews con…

This overview examines how the ecological concept of the landscape of fear, the spatial distribution of perceived predation risk, has been applied to human-carnivore conflict. It synthesises work expl…

Leopards are flexible in their timing of activity, becoming more strictly nocturnal where humans and dominant competitors are present. This overview synthesizes camera-trap studies showing that leopar…

Leopards are versatile solitary hunters whose success rests on stealth, ambush, and the ability to secure kills from kleptoparasites. This overview surveys studies of leopard hunting tactics across fo…

This overview examines persistent leopard predation on humans in the Pauri Garhwal hills of Uttarakhand, India, a region with a long history of so-called man-eating leopards. It synthesises work on th…

This overview examines human-leopard conflict in Sri Lanka, home to an endemic leopard subspecies that ranges across tea estates, scrub, and forest mosaics. It synthesises evidence on the leading thre…

This overview synthesises camera-trap and telemetry studies estimating leopard abundance, density, and movement within Sanjay Gandhi National Park, a forested island surrounded by metropolitan Mumbai.…

Leopards are among the most frequently camera-trapped big cats, their rosette patterns enabling robust individual identification across an enormous range spanning Africa and Asia. This overview survey…

Sanjay Gandhi National Park is a roughly hundred-square-kilometre forest island embedded within metropolitan Mumbai, hosting one of the highest known leopard densities recorded near a megacity. This o…

A survey of the leopard's exceptionally broad diet, the widest of any large felid, which lets it occupy more habitats than any other big cat. Leopards eat dozens to over a hundred prey species across…

Leopard home-range size and density vary enormously, reflecting the species' adaptability. This overview synthesizes telemetry and camera-trap studies showing that leopards occupy small territories at…

A survey of how the depletion of wild prey drives leopards to kill domestic livestock, fueling conflict that is a leading threat to the species. Across Africa and Asia, leopards persisting near people…

This overview synthesises studies of leopard predation on livestock across South and Central Asia, examining which species and age classes are most vulnerable, where and when attacks occur, and how hu…

Leopards often survive in small habitat fragments and human-dominated mosaics where other big cats vanish, but fragmentation still imposes costs. This overview synthesizes research on how leopard popu…

An overview of the significant and well-documented role of leopards as predators of primates, from monkeys to apes, and the evolutionary consequences for primate behavior. Leopards are major predators…

The leopard is among the most adaptable big cats, occupying habitats from rainforest to desert to urban edges, yet it has still lost much of its historical range to habitat loss and conflict. This ove…

This overview examines the frequent incidents of leopards falling into open agricultural wells across western India and the rescue operations that follow, which serve as flashpoints of human-leopard i…

Leopards are assessed both as a species and at the subspecies level, and the consolidation of subspecies by genetics directly affects conservation prioritization. This overview explains how recognizin…

An overview of how leopards coexist with dominant tigers in Asian forests by partitioning prey size, space and activity. Where tigers are abundant, leopards tend to take smaller prey, shift toward are…

Across India, leopards occupy a continuum from forest reserves to intensively farmed countryside, with sugarcane, tea and other tall-crop landscapes functioning as year-round habitat. This overview sy…

Leopards are remarkable among big cats for persisting in close proximity to dense human populations, including the edges of major cities. This overview synthesizes research, notably from India, on how…

In the rainforests of Central Africa and Southeast Asia, leopards occupy a very different niche from savanna populations. This overview synthesizes research on forest leopards, which hunt primates, du…

In the arid Kalahari, leopards survive with little surface water across vast, sparsely vegetated terrain. This overview synthesizes long-term observations of desert leopards showing how they range ove…