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🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries
AI-curated summaries for the pride’s library — verify citations independently before citing.
226 summaries matching “domestic cat”
The Feline Five: personality structure in domestic cats
PaperSurveying owners of over two thousand pet cats, researchers used questionnaire ratings to identify five reliable personality dimensions, dubbed the Feline Five: neuroticism, extraversion, dominance, i…
Carla Litchfield and colleagues · PLOS ONE · 2017
The Near Eastern Origin of Cat Domestication
PaperThis study traced the ancestry of the domestic cat by sampling wildcats across their range and comparing mitochondrial DNA from hundreds of wild and domestic individuals. The authors showed that all d…
Carlos A. Driscoll, Marilyn Menotti-Raymond, Stephen J. O'Brien, et al. · Science · 2007
The Near Eastern origin of cat domestication
PaperDriscoll and colleagues sampled mitochondrial DNA from nearly 1,000 wildcats and domestic cats across Europe, Asia and Africa to resolve where the house cat came from. The analysis showed all domestic…
Carlos A. Driscoll, Marilyn Menotti-Raymond, Alfred L. Roca, et al. · Science · 2007
The Near Eastern origin of cat domestication
PaperThis landmark study sampled wildcats across Europe, Africa, and Asia and used mitochondrial DNA and microsatellites to define the structure of the Felis silvestris complex and pinpoint the ancestry of…
Driscoll CA, Menotti-Raymond M, Roca AL, et al. · Science · 2007
The Taming of the Cat: an accessible synthesis of wildcat ancestry and domestication
ReviewThis widely read popular-science synthesis distilled the molecular findings on wildcat systematics and cat domestication for a general audience. Written by researchers central to the foundational wild…
Driscoll CA, Clutton-Brock J, Kitchener AC, O'Brien SJ · Scientific American · 2009
The characteristic response of domestic cats to plant iridoids provides chemical defense against mosquitoes
PaperThis landmark study investigated why cats rub and roll on silver vine and catnip, and uncovered a surprising functional benefit beyond apparent pleasure. The researchers identified nepetalactol as a p…
Reiko Uenoyama, Tamako Miyazaki, Jane L. Hurst, Robert J. Beynon, et al. · Science Advances · 2021
The hyoid apparatus and the ability to roar in big cats
PaperWhy can lions and tigers roar while domestic cats and cheetahs cannot? This comparative anatomical study examined the hyoid apparatus, the chain of bones supporting the larynx and tongue, across felid…
Gerald Weissengruber and colleagues · Journal of Anatomy · 2002
The impact of free-ranging domestic cats on wildlife mortality
PaperThis widely cited quantitative synthesis estimated that free-ranging domestic cats in the contiguous United States kill billions of birds and tens of billions of mammals annually, with unowned cats re…
Scott Loss, Tom Will, Peter Marra · Nature Communications · 2013
The impact of free-ranging domestic cats on wildlife of the United States
PaperLoss, Will and Marra produced a landmark quantitative estimate of how many wild animals free-ranging cats kill in the United States. Synthesizing data from predation studies through a systematic revie…
Scott R. Loss, Tom Will, Peter P. Marra · Nature Communications · 2013
The impact of free-ranging domestic cats on wildlife of the United States
PaperThis landmark quantitative synthesis estimated that free-ranging domestic cats kill billions of birds and many billions of mammals annually in the United States, identifying them as among the largest…
Loss SR, Will T, Marra PP · Nature Communications · 2013
The late Miocene radiation of modern Felidae: a genetic assessment
PaperThis influential study reconstructed the molecular phylogeny of all living cat species and dated their diversification, establishing the framework of eight major felid lineages used ever since. Using…
Johnson WE, Eizirik E, Pecon-Slattery J, et al. · Science · 2006
Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in domestic cats
PaperThis study demonstrated efficient airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2 between domestic cats under experimental conditions. Cats inoculated with the virus passed it to co-housed naive cats without dire…
P. J. Halfmann, M. Hatta, S. Chiba, et al. · New England Journal of Medicine · 2020
Unique seminal quality in the South African cheetah and a comparative evaluation in the domestic cat
PaperThis study established a quantitative baseline for cheetah reproductive physiology by electroejaculating wild-caught males and comparing their semen to that of domestic cats. The cheetahs produced eja…
Wildt DE, Bush M, Howard JG, O'Brien SJ, Meltzer D, van Dyk A, Ebedes H, Brand DJ · Biology of Reproduction · 1983
Visual communicative signals in cat-human and dog-human interactions
PaperMiklosi and colleagues compared how cats and dogs use and respond to human visual communicative signals, particularly pointing gestures indicating hidden food. Both species could follow human pointing…
Adam Miklosi, Peter Pongracz, Gabriella Lakatos, Jozsef Topal, Vilmos Csanyi · Journal of Comparative Psychology · 2005
Vocal recognition of owners by domestic cats
PaperSaito and Shinozuka used a habituation-dishabituation design to ask whether cats distinguish their owner's voice from strangers' voices. Cats heard recordings of three strangers calling the cat's name…
Atsuko Saito, Kazutaka Shinozuka · Animal Cognition · 2013
Why animal eyes have pupils of different shapes
PaperThis widely cited study tested why pupil shape varies so systematically across animals, finding a strong link between vertical-slit pupils and a terrestrial, ambush-predator lifestyle, exemplified by…
Martin S. Banks, William W. Sprague, Jurgen Schmoll, Jared A. Q. Parnell, Gordon D. Love · Science Advances · 2015