🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Solitary snow leopards communicate across their vast ranges through scent marks placed at conspicuous sites. This overview synthesizes research on how snow leopards spray scent on overhanging rocks, m…

Lions advertise and defend territory through a combination of roaring, scent marking, and scrapes. This overview reviews how the long-range roar communicates presence and group identity, allowing prid…

Leopards maintain their land-tenure system through scent marking, scrapes, and vocalizations that let solitary individuals space themselves and find mates. This overview synthesizes research on how le…

Cats use a suite of scent marks to communicate about territory, identity, and reproductive status, often without direct contact between individuals. This overview surveys how urine spraying, facial ru…

Alongside roaring, lions use scent marking to advertise territory and reproductive status. This overview surveys research on lion olfactory communication, including urine spraying onto vegetation, scr…

Cats communicate and organise their world through scent, marking with urine spray, facial rubbing, scratching and other signals, and the ability to perform and perceive these behaviours matters for we…

Solitary cats rely heavily on chemical signals to advertise reproductive status and locate mates across large ranges. This overview surveys how felids use urine spraying, scrapes, cheek rubbing, and g…

Cats deposit scent from glands on the face, flanks, and tail base when they rub against objects, people, and one another, a behaviour called bunting or allorubbing. This overview surveys research on t…

Wild cats communicate through scent-marking, spraying, scraping, cheek-rubbing, and clawing, leaving signals at conspicuous sites that they revisit, behavior that camera traps are uniquely positioned…

This overview explains the long-recognized morphological divide among sabertooth cats between scimitar-toothed forms, such as Homotherium, and dirk-toothed forms, such as Smilodon and Megantereon. Sci…

Behavioral and electrophysiological studies have probed how little light a cat needs to see, a quantity called the absolute or scotopic threshold. Estimates generally place feline low-light sensitivit…

Felids scratch trees and other surfaces and create ground scrapes that combine visual marks with scent from glands in the paws. This overview surveys research on the marking function of scratching acr…

Scratching is a normal, important feline behaviour that becomes a problem when directed at furnishings, and this overview surveys its functions and humane management. It examines how scratching mainta…

Snow leopards shift their use of the mountains seasonally, often following the movements of their prey up and down the slopes. This overview synthesizes tracking studies showing how snow leopards desc…

This overview reviews research on when big-cat conflict peaks, examining seasonal and diel patterns in depredation and attacks across systems. It synthesises findings that conflict often rises during…

Several boreal mammals, notably snowshoe hare, molt between brown summer and white winter coats on a fixed photoperiod schedule, and shrinking snow duration creates a camouflage mismatch when white an…

Cat coats change with the seasons, and this overview reviews moulting and seasonal adjustment of the coat. Many cats grow a denser coat for cold months and shed it for a lighter summer coat, with moul…

An overview of how the prey cats select shifts through the year with prey vulnerability, migration, birth pulses and weather. Many felids exploit seasonal ungulate calving and fawning peaks, when abun…

Cats living in temperate climates often show seasonal patterns of reproduction, with estrus and breeding concentrated in particular times of year, whereas tropical species may cycle year-round. This o…

This overview examines the wider ecological fallout of retaliatory poisoning aimed at big cats, especially the catastrophic secondary poisoning of vultures and other scavengers that feed on laced carc…

An overview of the long-debated tendency of cats to kill the young, old, sick and injured disproportionately, and what it implies for predation impact. If predators chiefly remove individuals with low…

Self-control tasks, such as choosing a larger delayed reward over a smaller immediate one, probe impulse regulation and have been studied across many species. This overview surveys the limited researc…

Clouded leopards are difficult to breed in captivity, and reproductive research has examined their semen quality alongside behavioral and stress factors. This overview surveys what is known about clou…

Because cats hide illness and age faster than humans, regular senior wellness screening, including more frequent examinations, blood and urine testing, blood pressure measurement, and weight and muscl…

A growing body of research asks whether cats are sensitive to whether a human is paying attention to them, a basic component of social cognition. This overview surveys experiments testing whether cats…

Ostensive signals such as eye contact and directed speech can mark communication as relevant, and research asks whether cats are sensitive to them. This overview surveys studies on cats' responses to…

Older cats can develop cognitive dysfunction, a decline in mental function that interacts with changes in the senses. This overview surveys the sensory aspects of feline cognitive dysfunction, in whic…

Long thought immune to separation distress, cats are now recognized to sometimes show separation-related problems, and this overview surveys the emerging research. It examines survey and observational…

Interpreting antibody tests in wild felids is complicated by cross-reactivity, where antibodies to one pathogen react with tests for a related agent, blurring diagnoses. This overview surveys the diag…

Serological surveys, which detect antibodies as evidence of past or present infection, are a workhorse of wildlife disease epidemiology. This overview surveys how serosurveys reveal pathogen exposure…