🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

This overview synthesises studies of leopard predation on livestock across South and Central Asia, examining which species and age classes are most vulnerable, where and when attacks occur, and how hu…

Leopards often survive in small habitat fragments and human-dominated mosaics where other big cats vanish, but fragmentation still imposes costs. This overview synthesizes research on how leopard popu…

An overview of the significant and well-documented role of leopards as predators of primates, from monkeys to apes, and the evolutionary consequences for primate behavior. Leopards are major predators…

The leopard is among the most adaptable big cats, occupying habitats from rainforest to desert to urban edges, yet it has still lost much of its historical range to habitat loss and conflict. This ove…

This overview examines the frequent incidents of leopards falling into open agricultural wells across western India and the rescue operations that follow, which serve as flashpoints of human-leopard i…

Leopards are assessed both as a species and at the subspecies level, and the consolidation of subspecies by genetics directly affects conservation prioritization. This overview explains how recognizin…

An overview of how leopards coexist with dominant tigers in Asian forests by partitioning prey size, space and activity. Where tigers are abundant, leopards tend to take smaller prey, shift toward are…

Across India, leopards occupy a continuum from forest reserves to intensively farmed countryside, with sugarcane, tea and other tall-crop landscapes functioning as year-round habitat. This overview sy…

Leopards are remarkable among big cats for persisting in close proximity to dense human populations, including the edges of major cities. This overview synthesizes research, notably from India, on how…

In the rainforests of Central Africa and Southeast Asia, leopards occupy a very different niche from savanna populations. This overview synthesizes research on forest leopards, which hunt primates, du…

In the arid Kalahari, leopards survive with little surface water across vast, sparsely vegetated terrain. This overview synthesizes long-term observations of desert leopards showing how they range ove…

As the largest African cat, the lion exerts strong intraguild pressure on cheetahs and leopards. This overview synthesizes research on how lions kill cheetah cubs and steal kills, forcing cheetahs int…

Where cats and livestock overlap, the distribution of herds and the layout of settlements shape predator movement, and this overview synthesizes telemetry insights relevant to conflict. GPS data show…

Livestock guarding dogs, such as Anatolian shepherds placed with herds, are a widely promoted nonlethal tool for reducing predation and the retaliatory killing of cats like cheetahs and leopards. This…

This overview surveys the global evidence on livestock-guarding dogs (LGDs), breeds such as Anatolian shepherds, Kangals, and Maremmas, bonded to herds to deter predators through presence, barking, an…

This overview synthesises evidence that competition between domestic livestock and wild ungulates, blue sheep, ibex, argali, depresses natural prey and increases snow leopard reliance on livestock. It…

This overview synthesises research using spatial analysis to identify hotspots where big-cat attacks on livestock or people concentrate, enabling targeted mitigation. It reviews methods, kernel densit…

Camera-trap surveys aimed at tigers and leopards routinely capture a hidden bycatch of small Asian cats, marbled cat, leopard cat, golden cat, jungle cat, and others, providing rare records of poorly…

Female leopards raise cubs alone, hiding them in dense cover and moving them between lairs to reduce the risk of detection by predators. This overview synthesizes research on leopard reproduction, inc…

How urban felids are portrayed in media and perceived by the public strongly influences tolerance, policy and conservation outcomes. This overview synthesises social-science research on news framing o…

This overview synthesises research on how news and social media portray big-cat attacks and conflict, and how that framing shapes public attitudes, fear, and policy. It reviews studies showing that se…

Black, or melanistic, coats appear repeatedly in wild cats, and this overview reviews this phenomenon and its causes. Melanism, seen famously in black leopards and jaguars, results from genetic varian…

A survey of how leopards, as widespread mid-to-large felids, suppress smaller carnivores through killing, kleptoparasitism and fear. Across Africa and Asia leopards kill and displace jackals, caracals…

Estimating how many big cats occupy an area is a central and challenging task in their ecology and conservation. This overview reviews the main methods, from individual-identification camera-trap capt…

A recurring complication in felid systematics is that trees built from mitochondrial DNA often disagree with those from nuclear DNA. This overview explains why: the maternally inherited mitochondrion…

This overview examines how molecular clocks, calibrated with fossils, have been used to estimate when the living big cats diverged from one another. Genetic studies place the origin of the Panthera li…

Whether the snow leopard should be split into subspecies is an active debate. This overview contrasts the traditional treatment of the snow leopard as a monotypic species with a 2017 proposal recogniz…

The history of cat classification is largely a story of tension and eventual integration between morphological and molecular approaches. This overview compares the two: morphology, including skull mor…

In the rugged mountains of the Middle East and Central Asia, leopards persist as rare, threatened populations adapted to arid, rocky terrain. This overview synthesizes what is known about the Arabian…

Leopards are solitary and territorial, yet females may mate with more than one male, and the resulting paternity patterns shed light on the species' mating system. This overview surveys observations o…