🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

This overview synthesises evidence that depletion of wild ungulate prey, through poaching, the bushmeat trade, and habitat loss, drives tigers toward livestock and, in extreme cases, people. It review…

Sundarbans tigers rely on prey such as spotted deer (chital) and wild boar, whose abundance depends on mangrove forest condition and freshwater availability. This overview surveys how climate-driven c…

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…

An overview of why island faunas that evolved without mammalian predators are devastated when cats are introduced. Lacking evolved anti-predator defenses, island birds, reptiles and small mammals are…

Across Africa lions take a wide spectrum of prey but show local specialization driven by abundance and profitability. This overview examines how some prides become buffalo specialists, particularly wh…

Domestic and small wild cats are generalist ambush hunters that adjust tactics to prey type, alternating sit-and-wait at burrows and active mobile searching. This overview synthesises diet and behavio…

This overview examines the idea that dietary and predatory specialization made many extinct big cats especially vulnerable to extinction. Hypercarnivorous predators such as sabertooths, with anatomy f…

How flexibly a cat can switch prey when its preferred species declines shapes its resilience to drought and habitat change. This overview surveys evidence on dietary breadth across felids, from specia…

An overview of how Canada lynx broaden their diet when snowshoe hares crash, a key feature of the boreal predator-prey cycle. Although lynx are hare specialists, during the hare decline and low they i…

An overview of the behavioral defenses ungulates and other prey deploy against felid predators, from vigilance scanning to alarm signaling and habitat avoidance. Because cats are stealthy ambush hunte…

A survey of how big cats process and consume their kills, and why handling time matters for kill-rate estimation and competition. Larger carcasses take longer to consume and force predators to remain…

Artificial light alters the behaviour, abundance and detectability of the rodents, birds and insects that felids hunt, indirectly affecting predators through the prey base. This overview synthesises r…

A felid’s diet largely determines its parasite burden, as many worms and protozoa are acquired by eating infected prey. This overview surveys how prey-mediated transmission shapes the parasitic fauna…

A methodological survey of the indices used to measure whether felids prefer or avoid prey relative to availability, including the Jacobs index, Ivlev's electivity and related measures central to the…

An overview of how the range of prey sizes a felid exploits scales with its own body mass, producing the nested prey-size structure of carnivore communities. Larger cats not only take larger average p…

How cats approach novel problems reveals their cognitive style and motivation. This overview surveys research using puzzle feeders, string-pulling tasks, and detour problems, examining persistence, th…

Progestin-based contraceptives have been used to suppress reproduction in captive cats, but concerns about side effects have shaped their use. This overview surveys the application of progestin contra…

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…

Feline leukemia virus infections range from progressive, with persistent viremia and high mortality, to regressive, where the host contains the virus and may clear detectable antigen. This overview su…

As suitable habitat contracts to higher, cooler refugia, the corridors linking snow leopard populations become critical for gene flow and recolonization. This overview surveys the methods researchers…

Beyond the vestibular system, cats rely on proprioception, the sense of the position and movement of their own limbs and body, to move with precision. This overview surveys feline proprioception, supp…

This overview surveys research examining how well protected areas sustain large carnivore populations and which reserve characteristics predict persistence. Studies show that reserve size, connectivit…

How keepers interact with dangerous captive carnivores spans a spectrum from free contact, sharing space with the animal, to protected contact, where a barrier always separates human and cat. This ove…

Individual protected areas are often too small to hold viable big cat populations on their own, making connectivity between reserves critical. This overview surveys research on how isolation affects c…

Protected areas are not permanent; governments sometimes weaken, shrink, or abolish them, a set of actions researchers call PADDD, for protected-area downgrading, downsizing, and degazettement. This o…

Protected areas are the cornerstone of felid conservation, but their effectiveness at stopping habitat loss varies and is tested by mounting land-use and climate pressure. This overview surveys method…

Protected areas are governed in many ways, from strict state-run parks to community conservancies and indigenous-managed lands, and governance shapes both conservation outcomes and social justice. Thi…

Individual reserves are rarely large enough to sustain wide-ranging cats on their own, so conservation increasingly relies on networks of protected areas linked by corridors, and this overview examine…

Protecting continuous elevation gradients lets species shift upslope as climate warms while staying within protected habitat, a recurring strategy for montane regions. This overview surveys the ration…

Cats fuel themselves chiefly with protein and fat, and this overview reviews how they use these substrates in feeding and fasting. With limited reliance on carbohydrate, cats draw energy from dietary…