🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

This overview examines research on forecasting big-cat attacks and translating risk maps into operational decisions, bridging prediction and action. It synthesises work modelling environmental and beh…

Captive big cats commonly fracture their large canine teeth through biting enclosure barriers, fighting, or chewing hard objects, exposing the pulp and causing pain and infection that require dental i…

The lion's roar carries for kilometres and serves multiple social functions, from advertising territory ownership to locating and coordinating with pride mates. This overview surveys research on roari…

This overview synthesises emerging priorities and frontiers in human-big cat conflict and coexistence research. It reviews calls for more rigorous impact evaluation, greater integration of social scie…

Surveys of the gut parasites of wild cats, typically based on fecal examination, provide a window into felid health, diet and environmental exposure. This overview surveys the common gastrointestinal…

This overview synthesises emerging research on how gender shapes exposure, perception, and response to big-cat conflict. It reviews evidence that women and men often experience conflict differently, o…

Captive big cats often live well beyond their wild lifespans, so managing ageing animals has become a central welfare task. This overview surveys geriatric felid care: recognising and treating chronic…

Captive big cats now routinely reach advanced ages, and zoos have developed geriatric care programs addressing arthritis, dental disease, kidney and heart disease, cancer, and quality-of-life assessme…

Gestation in felids scales broadly with body size, ranging from roughly two months in small cats to around three and a half months in the largest species. This overview compiles comparative data on pr…

A survey of how prey use group living to reduce predation by cats, through the many-eyes effect, dilution, confusion and collective defense. Larger herds detect stalking felids sooner and dilute indiv…

This overview synthesises evidence on why deterrents, lights, sirens, scent, and visual scarecrows, often lose effectiveness as predators habituate. It examines the behavioural ecology of neophobia an…

Hand-rearing orphaned or maternally rejected big cat cubs requires specialized veterinary and husbandry knowledge covering appropriate milk replacers matched to species composition, prevention of nutr…

Whether felid cubs are raised by their mothers or by humans has lasting effects on behaviour, social competence and welfare. This overview surveys the comparative evidence: hand-reared cats may show a…

Translocating wild felids for conservation, conflict mitigation, or population management involves significant veterinary considerations, including pre-release health screening, disease risk assessmen…

Wild cats host a diverse array of helminths, including roundworms such as Toxocara and Toxascaris, tapeworms like Spirometra and Taenia, hookworms and lungworms, acquired largely through their prey. T…

Hemotropic mycoplasmas, formerly called Haemobartonella, attach to red blood cells and can cause infectious anemia in felids, with wild cats carrying these bacteria across many populations. This overv…

Lions once ranged across Africa, southeast Europe, the Middle East, and into India, but have lost the overwhelming majority of that historical distribution. This overview surveys research reconstructi…

This overview synthesises research quantifying the economic burden of big-cat depredation on rural households, emphasising that losses small in aggregate can be devastating to individual families. It…

Leopards coexist with larger, dominant carnivores by avoiding them in space, time, and behavior. This overview synthesizes research showing how leopards select denser cover, shift activity to avoid pe…

Hung carcasses and bungee-suspended food are used to encourage captive cats to pull, leap and feed in physically demanding, naturalistic ways. This overview surveys studies that pair such feeding enri…

A survey of how cooperative group hunting affects capture success in lions, one of the few social felids. Evidence shows that hunting success often increases with group size for large or difficult pre…

Large felids under anesthesia frequently develop hypoxemia, low blood oxygen, due to the effects of recumbency and body mass on lung function, hypoventilation from anesthetic drugs, and ventilation-pe…

This overview synthesises research on the concept of problem individuals, specific big cats responsible for repeated attacks on livestock or people, and how to identify and manage them. It reviews evi…

Sex-biased dispersal is widely interpreted as a mechanism that reduces the chance of mating with close relatives, helping felids avoid the fitness costs of inbreeding. This overview surveys evidence t…

Inbreeding in small captive populations can reduce fertility, increase juvenile mortality, and cause physical and reproductive abnormalities, collectively termed inbreeding depression. This overview s…

Small, closed captive populations risk losing genetic diversity, raising the chance that deleterious recessive alleles pair up and reduce health, fertility and survival, a phenomenon known as inbreedi…

Lions live in a world structured by sound, and research has probed how they recognize one another and assess threats vocally. This overview reviews evidence that lions distinguish the roars of pride m…

Lion roars carry information not only about presence but potentially about the identity and competitive ability of the caller. This overview surveys research on the acoustic structure of roars, the ba…

This overview synthesises research on how individual big cats develop man-eating behaviour, integrating evidence from Tsavo lions, Sundarbans and Champawat tigers, and Indian leopards. It reviews the…

Infanticide is a central force in lion social evolution, occurring when incoming males kill the cubs of their predecessors to accelerate females' return to breeding condition. This overview surveys re…