🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Measuring glucocorticoid stress hormones in feces provides a noninvasive way to assess how stress relates to reproductive function in cats. This overview surveys the use of fecal glucocorticoid monito…

The presence of cats in South America results from the Great American Biotic Interchange, when the Isthmus of Panama connected the Americas and allowed northern mammals to disperse south. This overvie…

A survey of how the teeth, jaws and bite mechanics of cats are adapted for killing prey and how these features scale with prey size. Felids dispatch prey with a precise canine bite to the neck or skul…

Cats move through a sequence of gaits as speed rises, from a walk to a trot, then to bounding and galloping forms. This overview describes the footfall patterns, duty factors, and energetic and stabil…

An overview of how predation by cats can influence the spread and prevalence of disease in their prey populations. By selectively removing sick, weak or behaviorally abnormal individuals, predators ma…

An overview of the central role small mammals play in the diets of small and medium cats and of big cats during prey shortages. Species such as wildcats, jungle cats, sand cats, ocelots and many other…

Cats, both domestic and wild, are the only definitive hosts in which Toxoplasma gondii completes sexual reproduction and sheds environmentally resistant oocysts. This overview surveys the ecology of t…

Tea, coffee and rubber plantations across South and Southeast Asia form extensive human-modified habitats used by leopards, leopard cats, jungle cats and fishing cats with varying tolerance. This over…

Beyond the pathogenic FIV and FeLV, felids carry feline foamy virus, a generally apathogenic retrovirus that nonetheless offers a useful marker of contact and transmission. This overview surveys felin…

Feline herpesvirus and calicivirus, the main agents of cat respiratory disease, circulate in domestic cats and can spill into wild felids, causing upper respiratory and oral disease. This overview sur…

African lions carry their own feline immunodeficiency virus, FIV-Ple, which exists as several deeply divergent lineages that often co-circulate within and among populations. This overview synthesizes…

Beyond bovine tuberculosis, felids can be affected by other mycobacteria, including the agents of feline leprosy that cause nodular skin disease. This overview surveys what is known about these atypic…

Feline leukemia virus is fundamentally a domestic-cat pathogen, yet it has crossed into endangered wild felids with lethal consequences. This overview surveys documented and suspected spillover events…

Feline panleukopenia virus, a parvovirus closely related to canine parvovirus, causes severe, often fatal disease and circulates readily among domestic cats, posing a spillover risk to wild felids. Th…

Female lions usually remain in their natal pride for life, producing prides composed of closely related females that cooperate in hunting and cub rearing. This overview surveys the pattern of female p…

A wildlife crossing works only if animals are guided to it, and this overview examines the critical role of fencing in funneling wildlife toward structures while keeping them off the road. Exclusion f…

True to its name, the fishing cat is among the most piscivorous of felids, and this overview synthesizes diet studies confirming that fish form a major part of its diet, supplemented by rodents, birds…

The fishing cat is one of the few wild felids to persist within a Asian capital, surviving in the marshes, canals and waterways threaded through metropolitan Colombo, Sri Lanka. This overview synthesi…

The flat-headed cat is among the most piscivorous of felids, and this overview reviews its specialized aquatic diet. Observations and morphology indicate a diet centered on fish, frogs, and crustacean…

Fleas transmit a range of pathogens to felids, including Bartonella species responsible for cat-scratch disease, hemotropic mycoplasmas that cause anemia, and the plague bacterium. This overview surve…

Sabertooths such as Smilodon had exceptionally muscular, robust forelimbs, and this overview reviews their inferred role in subduing prey before the bite. Strong, heavily built front limbs would let t…

This overview examines the exceptionally powerful forelimbs of Smilodon and what they reveal about how the cat subdued prey. Compared with similarly sized living felids, Smilodon shows thickened limb…

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…

Free-ranging domestic cats are reservoirs and vectors for pathogens affecting wildlife, other cats and humans, including the protozoan that causes toxoplasmosis and various feline viruses. This overvi…

The risk that domestic-cat pathogens reach wild felids and other wildlife scales with the density and distribution of free-roaming cats, especially near protected areas. This overview surveys research…

Whether semen is used fresh or after cryopreservation strongly affects the success of artificial insemination in cats, since freezing damages a fraction of sperm. This overview surveys comparisons of…

Genome resource banks, sometimes called frozen zoos, store gametes, embryos, and cells from felids to preserve genetic diversity for future use. This overview surveys the concept and practice of bioba…

This overview surveys the bony chin flanges, or mandibular flanges, found in many sabertooth carnivores, including barbourofelids and the marsupial-relative Thylacosmilus, and in reduced form in some…

A survey of how Holling's functional-response framework is applied to cats to describe how their per-capita kill rate changes with prey density. Most felids are thought to show a saturating Type II re…

Connectivity has two distinct meanings often conflated in conservation, and this overview clarifies them. Structural connectivity describes the physical arrangement of habitat, whether patches are clo…