🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Conservation funding is limited, prompting research into how to maximize the return on investment, achieving the greatest conservation benefit per dollar spent on big cats and other carnivores. This o…

Return-to-field programs sterilize, vaccinate and return healthy unowned cats brought to shelters rather than euthanizing them, and this overview surveys their rationale and evaluation. It examines ho…

This overview examines efforts to revive the traditional Mongolian Bankhar livestock-guarding dog as a tool for reducing depredation by snow leopards, wolves, and other predators on the steppe and in…

Restoring large carnivores can reshape entire ecosystems through trophic cascades, in which predators influence prey behavior and numbers, which in turn affects vegetation and other species. This over…

Rhodopsin, the light-sensitive pigment packed into rod outer segments, is the molecular engine of night vision. This survey reviews work on feline rod photoreceptor structure, the stacked membrane dis…

Rivers, streams, and the vegetated strips along them often serve as natural movement corridors for cats, offering cover, water, prey, and continuous habitat threading through otherwise open or develop…

Beyond outright inundation, sea-level rise and reduced freshwater flow are increasing salinity in the Sundarbans, shifting mangrove species composition and forest productivity that underpin tiger habi…

This overview examines the persistent gap between perceived and actual risk in human-big cat conflict, a theme cutting across lion, tiger, leopard, puma, and jaguar systems. It synthesises research sh…

This overview explores the cultural and conflict-driven dimensions of lion killing among Maasai and related pastoralists, including the traditional olamayio lion hunt as a rite of warrior status along…

Roads affect cats through direct mortality and through the barrier effect that fragments populations, a central theme in carnivore conservation. This overview surveys research quantifying how highways…

Roads fragment habitat, kill animals, and act as barriers to movement, making road ecology an important field for carnivore conservation. This overview surveys research on how roads affect big cats an…

Across the range, and acutely in Texas, vehicle collisions are a leading documented cause of ocelot death. This overview gathers studies linking roads to direct mortality and to the subtler barrier ef…

Caracals on the Cape Peninsula range widely across a landscape bisected by busy roads, and vehicle collisions are among the most significant documented causes of death. This overview synthesises GPS-t…

As Iberian lynx populations expanded into landscapes crossed by roads, vehicle collisions became a leading cause of death, threatening to offset gains from breeding and reintroduction. This overview s…

In and around Colombo, vehicle collisions are a frequently recorded cause of death for fishing cats moving between fragmented wetland patches across a dense road network. This overview synthesises roa…

Across their range, leopard cats living in farmland and forest-edge mosaics suffer heavy road mortality, a leading documented cause of death in well-studied populations such as Taiwan. This overview s…

Roads bisecting cheetah habitat in central Iran have become a notable cause of Asiatic cheetah deaths, a severe problem for a population so small that each loss is consequential. This overview surveys…

In fragmented and urbanizing landscapes, vehicle collisions rank among the foremost causes of death for pumas, and this overview synthesizes telemetry-based survival studies documenting the toll. GPS…

Roads influence felid movement in layered ways, and this overview synthesizes how telemetry reveals them acting simultaneously as sources of mortality, physical and behavioral barriers, and selective…

This overview reviews research on how roads and urbanisation fragment puma populations and elevate human-puma conflict through roadkill, genetic isolation, and forced movement near people. It synthesi…

Urban infrastructure shapes the genetics of bobcat populations by impeding movement and gene flow across roads and developed corridors. This overview synthesises landscape-genetics studies, several fr…

Vehicle collisions are a leading cause of Iberian lynx death and a major barrier to the connectivity that climate-adaptive recovery depends on. This overview surveys how road networks fragment lynx ha…

Robenacoxib, a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug developed with selectivity for cyclooxygenase-2 and a tissue-selective profile, was studied and licensed for managing pain and inflammation in cats,…

A key reason cats see well in dim light is that many rods feed into each downstream neuron, a wiring strategy called convergence or spatial summation. By pooling the faint signals of hundreds of rods,…

Cat retinas are rich in rod photoreceptors, the cells specialised for dim-light vision, and this overview reviews how this composition shapes feline sight. A high rod-to-cone ratio, combined with conv…

The balance of rods to cones varies sharply across the surface of the cat retina, and that gradient shapes how cats see. Near the area centralis, the small region of peak cone density that handles the…

During his time in Griffith Park, the Los Angeles puma P-22 developed notoedric mange and was found to have been exposed to anticoagulant rodenticides, mirroring a pattern documented in regional bobca…

Documented anticoagulant exposure in Cape Town caracals has driven advocacy for safer rodent control, echoing regulatory debates in North America over the same compounds. This overview synthesises evi…

Rotational exhibit systems allow multiple species or individuals to take turns occupying a series of connected spaces, multiplying the effective territory and novelty available to each animal. This ov…

Whole-genome sequencing reveals long stretches where an individual inherited identical segments from both parents, called runs of homozygosity, which accumulate with inbreeding and small population si…