🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

TX2 refers to the global commitment, adopted at the 2010 St. Petersburg Tiger Summit, to double the number of wild tigers by 2022. This overview surveys the science behind the target and how progress…

Attacks on humans by tigers, though rare relative to encounters, have a long and consequential history. This overview synthesizes what ecological research suggests about the circumstances that lead a…

Crosses between lions and tigers in captivity produce ligers and tigons, hybrids notable for unusual growth patterns, with ligers often growing larger than either parent. This overview surveys the bio…

The Sunda islands once held three tiger populations, of which only the Sumatran survives; the Bali and Javan tigers are extinct. This overview examines how these island forms figure in tiger taxonomy.…

Tigers are solitary and territorial, and their spacing follows a land-tenure system in which residents hold and defend areas against same-sex rivals. This overview synthesizes how female territories a…

Beyond killing prey, big cats shape ecosystems through the fear they inspire, altering where and how prey forage. This overview synthesizes research on the landscape of fear, in which the risk of pred…

The Malayan tiger of the southern Malay Peninsula was formally separated from the Indochinese tiger in the early 2000s based on molecular evidence of genetic distinctiveness. This overview describes h…

The roar of a lion or tiger is among the loudest sounds a land mammal makes, and biomechanical research has sought to explain how such low, powerful sound is generated. This overview surveys findings…

The South China tiger, historically regarded as the stem population from which other tigers radiated, is functionally extinct in the wild and survives only in captivity. This overview examines its tax…

Few felid controversies are as prominent as how many subspecies of tiger exist. This overview lays out the competing positions: a conservative two-subspecies scheme (mainland and Sunda) advanced on co…

White tigers are not a separate subspecies but tigers carrying a recessive pigment variant, and nearly all captive white tigers descend from a small number of related founders, so producing them relie…

Felid species span tropical jungles, deserts and high mountains, so meeting their thermal needs in captivity, often in non-native climates, is a real welfare challenge. This overview surveys thermal w…

Across much of Asia tigers and leopards occur together, and their coexistence is mediated by differences in prey size and behavior. This overview synthesizes research showing that leopards shift towar…

This overview reviews human-tiger and human-leopard conflict in Nepal's Terai Arc, where recovering tiger populations in and around Chitwan and Bardia overlap with dense rural settlement and buffer-zo…

While tigers recovered in parts of South Asia, populations across mainland Southeast Asia, including Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and much of Myanmar, collapsed toward functional extinction. This overview…

Central India holds a network of tiger reserves embedded in a matrix of forest, farmland, roads, and mines, making connectivity between reserves vital for genetic exchange and recolonization. This ove…

The Terai Arc Landscape, stretching along the India-Nepal border, is a flagship for corridor-based tiger conservation, aiming to link a chain of reserves through forest corridors so tigers can dispers…

Thousands of tigers are held in captive breeding operations, particularly in parts of East and Southeast Asia, fueling a long-running debate over whether legal or illegal trade in captive-bred tiger p…

Large-scale captive tiger breeding facilities, particularly those linked to trade in tiger parts, present severe and systemic welfare concerns. This overview surveys the welfare dimensions of so-calle…

Within their territories tigers select habitat features that aid stalking, provide shade, and offer water. This overview synthesizes telemetry and camera-trap studies showing that tigers favor dense c…

Capturing wild tigers for collaring, translocation, or treatment of injuries and conflict situations requires carefully planned chemical immobilization given the species' endangered status, solitary b…

How often a tiger must kill depends on prey size, the cat's body mass, reproductive state, and competition at carcasses. This overview synthesizes GPS-cluster and observational studies estimating that…

This overview synthesizes telemetry and genetic studies of how young tigers leave their natal territories to establish their own ranges across India's reserve network. Subadult tigers, especially male…

This overview examines how India's tiger recovery, driven by protection and prey restoration, has increased conflict at reserve boundaries as growing populations disperse into human-dominated land. It…

A survey of how tiger predation interacts with ungulate prey in Indian reserves and why prey abundance is the master variable for tiger recovery. Tigers prefer large prey such as sambar, gaur and wild…

Tigers are capable of killing very large prey, and their diet centers on medium to large ungulates wherever these are available. This overview synthesizes kill and scat studies showing that species su…

Nepal became an early flagship for the tiger doubling agenda, reporting substantial population growth in its lowland Terai reserves such as Chitwan and Bardia. This overview surveys research on what d…

India has rebuilt tiger populations in reserves where they were lost by translocating wild tigers, most notably at Panna and Sariska, and this overview surveys the science of those efforts. Studies do…

After poaching wiped out tigers in two Indian reserves, Sariska and Panna, conservationists attempted to rebuild populations by translocating wild tigers from source reserves. This overview surveys th…

Tiger reserves, especially in India, embody a particular protected-area model built around strictly protected cores surrounded by multiple-use buffer zones, often combined with voluntary relocation of…