🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

This overview surveys the Pseudaelurus-grade cats, a diverse assemblage of stem felids that flourished across Eurasia and North America during the Miocene and bridged the dawn cat Proailurus and the l…

The Random Encounter Model estimates animal density for species that cannot be individually identified by relating the rate at which they trigger cameras to their density, using the physics of random…

The Rivalta test, a simple inexpensive bedside test that observes whether a drop of effusion fluid retains its shape in a dilute acetic acid solution, has been studied as an aid to distinguishing FIP…

The Royle-Nichols model leverages a simple insight: sites holding more individuals are more likely to produce a detection, so variation in detection across sites encodes information about local abunda…

The Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool, SMART, has become a global standard for making ranger patrols data-driven across big cat reserves. This overview surveys research on how SMART records patrol…

Effective enrichment is a structured process, not a collection of toys, and the SPIDER framework, Setting goals, Planning, Implementing, Documenting, Evaluating and Re-adjusting, formalises this cycle…

A small, cryptic population of cheetahs survives across the Sahara and Sahel of Northwest Africa, representing a distinct and critically endangered lineage adapted to extreme desert conditions. This o…

In South Africa, cheetahs persist in numerous small, fenced reserves too isolated to function as a natural population, so conservationists manage them collectively as a metapopulation by translocating…

The Tropical Ecology Assessment and Monitoring (TEAM) Network pioneered standardized, long-term camera-trap monitoring of terrestrial mammals and birds across multiple tropical forest sites worldwide.…

TX2 refers to the global commitment, adopted at the 2010 St. Petersburg Tiger Summit, to double the number of wild tigers by 2022. This overview surveys the science behind the target and how progress…

This overview examines the hypothesis that the Tibetan Plateau and surrounding high-altitude Central Asia served as a cradle for the evolution of big cats and other cold-adapted carnivores. The discov…

The wildlife crossings along the Trans-Canada Highway through Banff National Park constitute one of the longest-running, most comprehensively monitored road-mitigation programs in the world, and this…

The Tsushima cat, restricted to Tsushima Island between Japan and Korea, is a critically endangered population of the leopard cat. This overview examines its taxonomic status, established by molecular…

The UNESP-Botucatu multidimensional composite pain scale was developed and validated to assess acute postoperative pain in cats, combining behavioral observations, responses to palpation, and physiolo…

With leopards long gone from the Cape Peninsula, the caracal is the last remaining wild felid predator around Cape Town, and the Urban Caracal Project has made it a flagship for urban wildlife researc…

This overview describes a pair of cave lion cubs, often referred to as Uyan and Dina, recovered from Siberian permafrost and among the first such mummified Panthera spelaea young to attract wide scien…

The Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing, under construction over US Highway 101 at Liberty Canyon near Los Angeles, is among the largest wildlife crossings in the world and was conceived largely to res…

The Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing is among the largest wildlife overpasses in the world, built to span a major multi-lane freeway northwest of Los Angeles and reconnect puma and other wildlife po…

Wildlife Insights is a cloud platform that lets researchers upload, manage, share, and analyze camera-trap data with integrated artificial-intelligence species identification, aiming to unify a fragme…

Research increasingly frames feline kidney disease as a continuum in which episodes of acute kidney injury, from toxins, ischemia, infection, or obstruction, can leave residual damage that predisposes…

The Barbary lion of North Africa, famed for its dark, full mane, went extinct in the wild during the 20th century, and its status has fascinated taxonomists. This overview reviews ancient and historic…

The COVID-19 lockdowns created an unprecedented, sudden reduction in human activity dubbed the anthropause, and this overview examines what it revealed and may yet reveal about how cats respond to hum…

Unlike the primate fovea, the cat's region of sharpest vision is a broader, shallower zone called the area centralis. This survey reviews what is known about its photoreceptor and ganglion cell compos…

This overview examines the vertebral column and trunk anatomy of machairodont cats and how they contributed to predation. The neck vertebrae of sabertooths are often elongated and bear large attachmen…

The bay cat lineage comprises three Asian cats: the Asian golden cat, the bay cat of Borneo, and the marbled cat. This overview surveys the genetic evidence establishing this lineage as one of the eig…

The bay cat lineage is one of the eight major felid lineages and comprises three Southeast Asian cats: the bay cat, the Asian golden cat, and the marbled cat. This overview surveys the lineage, placin…

The black-footed cat, one of the smallest wild cats, is a southern African member of the Felis lineage notable for its fierce hunting and, in captivity, for inherited kidney disease. This overview sur…

Dichromatic animals typically perceive color along a single axis, and in cats that axis runs roughly from blue to yellow. This overview surveys evidence that cats discriminate short-wavelength from lo…

One of the most robust axes of feline personality is a bold-to-shy or confident-to-fearful continuum that shapes how cats respond to novelty, strangers, and handling. This overview surveys research on…

Cats hear across an exceptionally wide frequency range, and this overview reviews its extent and predatory value. Feline hearing extends well into ultrasonic frequencies, higher than humans and even m…