🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

The Asiatic lion, once spread across southwest Asia, survives as a single wild population in and around the Gir forest of Gujarat, India, recovered from a few dozen animals a century ago to several hu…

The Asiatic or Indian desert wildcat, often classified as Felis lybica ornata, ranges across Central and South Asia in arid and semi-arid habitats. This overview reviews its taxonomic placement within…

This overview examines the central role of the Bering land bridge in the history of cats, serving as a recurrent corridor for felid movement between Asia and North America. The survey reviews how lowe…

The Black Hills of South Dakota host a recovering cougar population that has become a documented source of long-distance dispersers spreading eastward across the Great Plains. This overview synthesize…

This overview describes the Cerro Batallones fossil sites in central Spain, a cluster of late Miocene deposits remarkable for their unusually high proportion of carnivores, including the sabertooths M…

This overview revisits the historical record of man-eating tigers in the Himalayan foothills, centred on the Champawat tigress reputed to have killed hundreds before being shot by Jim Corbett in the e…

In 2011 a young male cougar was struck and killed on a Connecticut parkway, far outside any known breeding population in the eastern United States. This overview describes how genetic analysis and a t…

The Felis lineage contains the domestic cat and its closest wild relatives, including the European wildcat, the African and Near Eastern wildcat, the sand cat, the jungle cat, the black-footed cat, an…

The wildcat complex is among the most taxonomically debated felid groups because of its broad range, clinal variation, and entanglement with the domestic cat. This overview surveys the complex's struc…

The Florida panther is an isolated, endangered puma population whose taxonomy and management illustrate how classification interacts with conservation genetics. This overview explains how the Florida…

A feline version of the Glasgow composite measure pain scale was developed to assess acute pain in cats through observation of behaviors and responses, including facial expressions, providing another…

Adopted at the 2010 St. Petersburg summit, the Global Tiger Recovery Program coordinated commitments from the thirteen tiger range countries around the goal of doubling wild tigers. This overview surv…

The IUCN SSC Cat Specialist Group is the authority most responsible for the consensus list of cat species and subspecies. This overview describes its structure, its publication Cat News, and how it co…

Reflecting its recovery, the Iberian lynx was downlisted on the IUCN Red List from Critically Endangered to Endangered, and later assessments recognized further improvement as populations and range co…

The Iberian lynx, Lynx pardinus, is a critically endangered Mediterranean felid recognized as a full species distinct from the Eurasian lynx. This overview reviews the evidence for its species status,…

A coordinated captive breeding program was a cornerstone of Iberian lynx recovery, producing animals for reintroduction while safeguarding genetic diversity. This overview surveys research underpinnin…

The Iberian lynx captive breeding program is widely cited as a conservation success that helped reverse the species' decline toward extinction. This overview surveys the program's establishment, its g…

The Iberian lynx genome, among the first sequenced for an endangered cat, revealed the genomic consequences of its extreme population decline. This overview surveys how genomic studies documented exce…

The Iberian lynx, once the world's most endangered cat, fell to roughly a hundred animals in two isolated Spanish populations early this century before an intensive, sustained recovery effort reversed…

The Jaguar Corridor Initiative is a range-wide effort to maintain a connected network of habitat allowing jaguars to move between core populations from Mexico to Argentina. This overview surveys resea…

The Jaguar Corridor Initiative aims to keep jaguar populations connected from Mexico to Argentina by conserving linkages between core areas. This overview surveys how the initiative's corridor framewo…

The Javan leopard, Panthera pardus melas, is an isolated and threatened population restricted to the island of Java, frequently melanistic. This overview reviews evidence for its status as a distinct…

This overview reviews the well-documented spike in leopard attacks on people in the Junnar region of Maharashtra in the early 2000s, which followed intensive capture-and-translocation of leopards into…

The pampas cat, Leopardus colocola, shows dramatic variation in coat color and pattern across its wide South American range, fueling long debate over whether it is one variable species or several. Thi…

The Lion Guardians model, developed in Maasai lands of East Africa, employs young men from local communities, often former lion hunters, to monitor lions, warn herders, reinforce enclosures, and reduc…

This overview examines the Lion Guardians program in East Africa, which employs Maasai warriors to monitor lions, recover lost livestock, reinforce bomas, and warn herders, converting potential lion-k…

This overview examines a well-documented predator compensation fund on Mbirikani Group Ranch in southern Kenya, where Maasai livestock owners receive payments for verified kills by lions and other car…

The Persian or Caucasian leopard, the largest leopard subspecies, ranges across the Caucasus, Iran, and Central Asia and is recognized as Panthera pardus tulliana following nomenclatural review. This…

The Population Assessment of the World's Snow Leopards, known as PAWS, is a coordinated international effort to produce the first robust, range-wide estimate of snow leopard numbers using standardized…

The Preyer reflex is a rapid, involuntary movement of the ear in response to a sudden sound, used historically as an indicator of hearing. This overview surveys how such reflexive ear responses appear…