🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

A survey of how felids exploit the seasonal pulse of newborn ungulates, a period of high vulnerability that can dominate annual recruitment losses. During calving and fawning seasons, abundant, hidden…

An overview of how the scent of felid predators alone can suppress prey foraging, movement and reproduction, demonstrating nonconsumptive effects without any direct attack. Prey detect chemical cues o…

This overview surveys evidence on reinforcing nighttime livestock enclosures (bomas, kraals) to prevent attacks by lions, leopards, hyenas, and cheetahs across East African rangelands. It covers the p…

Reinforcing the enclosures, or bomas, where livestock are kept at night is among the most direct ways to reduce predation by lions, leopards, and other cats, and thereby retaliatory killing. This over…

A survey of the strong, general relationship between the abundance of prey and the density of the carnivores that depend on them, a cornerstone of predator ecology. Across species and systems, predato…

A survey of the minimum prey abundance large cats need to maintain viable populations and why prey depletion is a leading cause of felid decline. Because predator density scales with prey biomass, the…

A survey of the anti-predator escape behaviors prey use once detected or attacked by cats and how they determine the outcome of a hunt. Prey employ rapid acceleration, unpredictable zig-zagging, stott…

Across Africa lions take a wide spectrum of prey but show local specialization driven by abundance and profitability. This overview examines how some prides become buffalo specialists, particularly wh…

An overview of the behavioral defenses ungulates and other prey deploy against felid predators, from vigilance scanning to alarm signaling and habitat avoidance. Because cats are stealthy ambush hunte…

A survey of how big cats process and consume their kills, and why handling time matters for kill-rate estimation and competition. Larger carcasses take longer to consume and force predators to remain…

Individual reserves are rarely large enough to sustain wide-ranging cats on their own, so conservation increasingly relies on networks of protected areas linked by corridors, and this overview examine…

Numerical cognition has been studied extensively in birds and primates, and a smaller body of work asks whether cats discriminate quantities. This overview surveys experiments testing whether cats can…

Rabies, an almost invariably fatal lyssavirus infection, occasionally strikes wild felids exposed through bites from infected dogs, jackals or other wildlife reservoirs. This overview surveys document…

A central question in distemper ecology is how a virus historically associated with dogs repeatedly jumps into cats. This overview surveys research on the molecular basis of canine distemper virus hos…

The kin structure of lion prides, with related females and coalitions of often-related males, underlies the cooperative behaviors that define the species. This overview surveys genetic studies of rela…

This overview examines how religious beliefs, sacred associations, and cultural traditions foster, or sometimes undermine, tolerance for big cats. It synthesises cases such as reverence for tigers and…

Long-term studies of wild lions allow researchers to examine how female reproductive performance changes with age and whether lionesses experience a post-reproductive period. This overview surveys evi…

When males cooperate in coalitions, reproductive skew describes how evenly or unequally reproduction is divided among members. This overview surveys reproductive skew in felid coalitions, particularly…

Male reproductive success in cats depends on the ability to acquire and defend mating opportunities, which often declines with age as competitive ability wanes. This overview surveys how aging affects…

This overview examines retaliatory poisoning, a leading and indiscriminate cause of large-carnivore mortality, focusing on the misuse of agricultural pesticides such as carbofuran (sold as Furadan) la…

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…

Small cats seem to out-jump big cats relative to their size, and this overview reviews how jumping ability scales across the felid family. Physical principles predict that absolute jump height does no…

Lions are both hunters and scavengers, and their relationship with spotted hyenas is a central feature of African large-carnivore communities. This overview reviews how lions appropriate hyena kills a…

Many felids scavenge as well as hunt, and feeding on carcasses exposes them to pathogens including anthrax, bovine tuberculosis and parasites concentrated in dead and diseased animals. This overview s…

An overview of how much carrion features in the diets of cats traditionally viewed as pure hunters. While felids are generally more reliant on fresh kills than canids or hyaenids, many will scavenge o…

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…

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…

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…

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…