🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Drought reverberates through ecosystems by reducing vegetation, prey body condition, and reproduction, with cascading effects on the predators that depend on them. This overview surveys how droughts o…

African lions inhabit savannas where drought and water availability strongly shape prey abundance and distribution, making them sensitive to climate variability. This overview surveys how droughts red…

Drought intensifies competition between people and predators for scarce water, forage, and livestock, often heightening human-wildlife conflict. This overview surveys how dry periods push cats toward…

Before genomic sequencing, researchers used protein and allozyme variation to compare lion populations and found that the isolated Asiatic lions of Gir harbored strikingly little biochemical genetic v…

This overview reviews technological and community early-warning systems designed to alert people to the presence of big cats before conflict occurs. It synthesises approaches including GPS- and geofen…

The last wild Asiatic lions persist in and around the Gir forest of Gujarat, India, where their ecology differs notably from African populations. This overview reviews how Gir lions live in smaller gr…

Conserving big cats in a human-dominated world depends on applying their ecology to the challenge of coexistence. This overview synthesizes how understanding prey requirements, ranging, dispersal, and…

A survey of how the kills of large cats function as a form of ecosystem engineering, structuring scavenger communities, nutrient flow and local biodiversity. Because predators such as pumas, leopards…

Many lion populations now persist in protected areas surrounded by human land use, and the reserve edge is a zone of elevated risk. This overview synthesizes studies showing how lions that range near…

Collecting semen from nondomestic cats usually requires electroejaculation under anesthesia, a standardized technique that allows evaluation and banking of sperm. This overview surveys how electroejac…

Beyond the well-known feline immunodeficiency and leukemia viruses, felid genomes carry endogenous retroviruses and other retroelements that record ancient infections. This overview surveys the spectr…

Infectious disease can cause sudden, severe declines in lion populations, as shown by canine distemper outbreaks. This overview reviews how a 1990s distemper epidemic killed a large fraction of Sereng…

Accurate drug dosing for field immobilization depends on estimating the body weight of an unweighable free-ranging felid, a source of significant error that can lead to underdosing, with dangerous inc…

Counting lions reliably is surprisingly difficult, and methodological choices strongly affect the numbers that drive conservation decisions. This overview surveys techniques used to estimate lion abun…

A recurring pitfall in enrichment research is treating an animal's interaction with an item as proof of benefit, when use and welfare improvement are not the same. This overview surveys the methodolog…

Vocal abilities are distributed across the felid family tree in informative ways, and this overview reviews the evolution of cat vocal anatomy. Mapping hyoid structure and laryngeal features onto feli…

This overview reviews how direct experience of livestock loss or a frightening encounter shapes attitudes and tolerance toward big cats, with mixed findings across studies. It synthesises evidence tha…

Beyond gradual trends, extreme events, severe droughts, heatwaves, floods, and harsh winters, can cause abrupt declines in cat populations or their prey. This overview surveys documented cases where e…

A survey of the conditions under which big cats switch from hunting to scavenging, and what this means for their ecology. Although large felids lack the scavenging specializations of hyenas and vultur…

Much pacing in captive big cats clusters in the period before scheduled feeding, suggesting that predictable meal times generate anticipatory arousal expressed as repetitive walking. This overview sur…

A survey of how the teeth, jaws and bite mechanics of cats are adapted for killing prey and how these features scale with prey size. Felids dispatch prey with a precise canine bite to the neck or skul…

An overview of how predation by cats can influence the spread and prevalence of disease in their prey populations. By selectively removing sick, weak or behaviorally abnormal individuals, predators ma…

African lions carry their own feline immunodeficiency virus, FIV-Ple, which exists as several deeply divergent lineages that often co-circulate within and among populations. This overview synthesizes…

Lion prides are built on female philopatry, with daughters typically remaining in their natal range while subadult males are forced out to become nomads. This overview examines how this sex-biased dis…

Female lions usually remain in their natal pride for life, producing prides composed of closely related females that cooperate in hunting and cub rearing. This overview surveys the pattern of female p…

This overview synthesises the use of fencing, from electrified perimeter fences around reserves to village-boundary barriers and predator-proof enclosures, to separate big cats from people and livesto…

Immobilizing free-ranging lions for collaring, health assessment, treatment, or research relies on established protocols typically combining dissociative anesthetics with alpha-2 agonists, delivered b…

Although a pride is a stable social unit, its members are rarely all together; lions move in subgroups that split and merge in a fission-fusion pattern. This overview surveys research on how pride mem…

Although a pride is a stable membership group, its members are rarely all together at once. This overview reviews how lionesses split into subgroups that hunt, rest, and travel independently before re…

This overview reviews the use of flashing LED deterrent systems, including commercial Foxlights and the locally invented Lion Lights popularised by Kenyan inventor Richard Turere, to discourage noctur…