🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

This overview synthesises research showing that much apparent human-carnivore conflict is in fact conflict between human groups, communities versus conservation authorities, locals versus outsiders, e…

Although often called solitary, domestic cats display a flexible social organisation that depends heavily on the distribution of food and shelter. This overview synthesises decades of observation show…

Captive cheetahs frequently show ovarian inactivity, and social stress is among the proposed contributors to suppressed cycling and anovulation. This overview surveys research linking the social envir…

Domestic cats are facultatively social and did not evolve to share territory with unrelated individuals, so multi-cat households can generate chronic social stress that manifests as behaviour and heal…

Many homes keep several cats, but because cats are facultatively social and territorial, cohabitation can generate chronic stress. This overview surveys research on the welfare challenges of multi-cat…

Although often considered solitary, cats form social groups under abundant resources, and this overview surveys research on the structure of feral colonies. It examines how colonies typically center o…

Shelters can apply knowledge of the sensitive period to improve the socialization and adoptability of kittens, and this overview surveys research on such programs. It examines interventions providing…

How animals are released strongly affects reintroduction success, and conservationists distinguish soft release, in which animals are held in on-site enclosures and supported after release, from hard…

Battery life is the hard ceiling on tracking duration, so engineers pursue energy harvesting to extend or even indefinitely sustain deployments. This overview covers solar panels integrated into colla…

Female cheetahs lead solitary lives and, unlike territorial males, range over very large areas that track the movements of their prey. This overview synthesizes research, especially from the Serengeti…

The tiger is a powerful solitary ambush predator capable of taking prey far larger than itself. This overview surveys research on tiger hunting, including the reliance on dense cover for close approac…

The bobcat is a widespread solitary North American felid whose behaviour has been studied through radio-telemetry and camera traps. This overview surveys research on bobcat spatial organisation, with…

An overview comparing the hunting effectiveness of solitary felids with the cooperative hunting of lions, addressing why most cats hunt alone. Solitary ambush hunting suits stalking predators that tar…

Banking living somatic cells, such as skin fibroblasts, preserves an individual's full genome for potential future use in cloning or stem cell technologies. This overview surveys the collection, cultu…

Pinpointing the direction of a sound is essential for a predator that hunts partly by ear, and cats are skilled localizers. This overview surveys studies of feline sound localization acuity, which com…

In addition to bitter and savory tastes, cats detect sour and may have specialized responses to water, rounding out their taste capabilities. This overview surveys feline sour taste, which signals aci…

This overview surveys research treating tiger populations as networks of sources, where reproduction exceeds mortality, and sinks, where animals die faster than they breed but persist through immigrat…

Tiger persistence across Asia increasingly depends on networks of reserves connected by corridors. This overview synthesizes the source-sink framework, in which well-protected core reserves with abund…

Across the western United States, puma populations range from large and connected to small and isolated, and genetics reveals how habitat configuration creates source and sink dynamics. This overview…

Initiatives to receive signals from very small animal tags via satellites or the International Space Station, such as the ICARUS effort, promise to shrink trackers and broaden which species can be fol…

Where multiple cat species coexist, smaller felids often adjust their use of space and time to avoid larger, dominant competitors, and camera-trap data are a primary means of detecting these interacti…

An overview of how cheetahs reduce the risk of intraguild predation and kleptoparasitism by avoiding lions across space and time. As a subordinate cursorial predator, the cheetah suffers heavy cub mor…

GPS-tracking of caracals on the Cape Peninsula has revealed how they configure home ranges across the fragmented landscape of Table Mountain National Park, suburbs, vineyards and coastline. This overv…

Navigating and exploiting a home range requires cats to build and use spatial knowledge of their environment. This overview surveys research on how cats learn the layout of their territory, the locati…

Building on spatially explicit capture-recapture, spatial mark-resight and unmarked SECR methods estimate density when few or no animals can be individually identified, exploiting the spatial pattern…

How long and how accurately can a cat remember where an object or prey item disappeared? This overview surveys research on feline spatial memory, including delayed-search tasks measuring how memory fo…

Pumas, also called cougars or mountain lions, are solitary felids whose social lives revolve around spatial organisation maintained largely through scent communication. This overview surveys GPS and f…

The grain and extent at which a habitat model is built strongly influence its conclusions, a key consideration for wide-ranging cats. This overview surveys how the choice of spatial resolution, from c…

Identifying where to concentrate conservation under climate change requires mapping vulnerability, combining exposure to change with the value and irreplaceability of habitat. This overview surveys ho…

This overview reviews how spatial zoning, separating core predator habitat, buffer zones, and human-use areas, and broader land-use planning can structure coexistence with big cats. It synthesises app…