🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Vitale, Behnke and Udell adapted the secure base test used with infants and dogs to ask whether cats form attachment bonds with their owners. Cats experienced a brief separation from and reunion with…

Kristyn R. Vitale, Alexandra C. Behnke, Monique A. R. Udell · Current Biology · 2019

This study tested whether cats modify their behaviour according to their owner's displayed emotion, comparing happy and angry expressions. Cats showed behaviours consistent with detecting the emotiona…

Moriah Galvan, Jennifer Vonk · Animal Cognition · 2016

Galvan and Vonk investigated whether domestic cats are sensitive to their owners' emotional expressions, a capacity well documented in dogs. Cats were exposed to their owner displaying either a happy…

Moriah Galvan, Jennifer Vonk · Animal Cognition · 2016

Adapting the Strange Situation Test used with infants and dogs, researchers observed how cats behaved when their owner left and returned. Cats displayed distinct attachment styles: secure individuals…

Kristyn Vitale, Alexandra Behnke, Monique Udell · Current Biology · 2019

This study produced an improved domestic cat genome assembly and compared it with wildcats and other mammals to find molecular footprints of domestication. The authors identified selection signals in…

Michael J. Montague, Wesley C. Warren, Stephen J. O'Brien, et al. · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2014

Montague and colleagues produced a high-quality domestic cat reference genome and compared it with wild felids and other mammals to find the genetic footprint of domestication. They detected selection…

Michael J. Montague, Gang Li, Barbara Gandolfi, et al. · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2014

Researchers tested whether cats, like dogs, can use a human pointing gesture to locate hidden food. Cats successfully chose the indicated container above chance, showing they can read this human commu…

Adam Miklosi and colleagues · Journal of Comparative Psychology · 2005

Building on emotion research, this study asked whether cats integrate visual and auditory emotional information from both humans and other cats. Cats were presented with facial expressions and vocalis…

Serenella d'Ingeo, Angelo Quaranta and colleagues · Animals · 2020

Potter and Mills applied a modified Ainsworth Strange Situation Test to pet cats to test whether they treat owners as an attachment figure providing security. Measuring behaviours during separations a…

Alice Potter, Daniel S. Mills · PLoS ONE · 2015

At the 5,300-year-old farming village of Quanhucun in central China, Hu and colleagues combined zooarchaeology with stable isotope analysis of cat, rodent, human and dog bones to reconstruct an early…

Yaowu Hu, Songmei Hu, Weilin Wang, et al. · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2014

This study identified the molecular cause of the dominant white and white-spotting coat patterns in domestic cats, mapping both to the KIT gene that governs the migration of pigment-cell precursors du…

Victor A. David, Marilyn Menotti-Raymond, et al. · G3: Genes, Genomes, Genetics · 2014

This paper reported the first draft genome of the domestic cat, sequenced at modest coverage from an Abyssinian cat named Cinnamon. Despite the light sequencing, the authors leveraged comparative mapp…

Joan U. Pontius, Stephen J. O'Brien, et al. · Genome Research · 2007

Doherty and colleagues assessed the contribution of invasive predators, prominently including feral cats, to global vertebrate extinctions and declines. Analyzing threatened and extinct species worldw…

Tim S. Doherty, Alistair S. Glen, Dale G. Nimmo, Euan G. Ritchie, Chris R. Dickman · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2016

This early comparative study assessed how cats and dogs solve visible and invisible displacement tasks, the benchmarks Piaget used to chart object permanence in human infants. Both species succeeded a…

Estrella Triana, Robert Pasnak · Animal Learning and Behavior · 1981

This landmark genetic study explained the long-noted fact that cats show little interest in sweet foods. The researchers found that cats carry a defective, non-functional version of Tas1r2, one of the…

Xia Li, Weihua Li, Hong Wang, et al. · PLoS Genetics · 2005

Gonadotropin-releasing hormone and its agonists are used to induce ovulation in cats by stimulating the pituitary to release luteinizing hormone, substituting for the natural mating stimulus. This ove…

Domestication reshaped cat behavior, reducing fear of humans and increasing tolerance and sociability, and genetics is beginning to reveal the underlying changes. This overview surveys evidence that s…

Selective breeding for a flat, shortened face in Persians and related breeds produces brachycephaly, and this overview surveys its welfare consequences. It examines how extreme facial conformation is…

Whether cats track whether a person is paying attention to them bears on their social cognition. This overview surveys experiments testing if cats adjust their behaviour according to a human's attenti…

Object-choice tasks, in which an animal must use a human pointing gesture to find hidden food, are a standard probe of social cognition. This overview surveys studies applying these tasks to cats, whi…

Cognition has been studied far less in cats than in primates, birds, or dogs, but a coherent picture is emerging across the felid family. This overview synthesises research on object permanence, spati…

Cats and dogs differ in how they handle water, and this overview reviews the comparison and its roots in feline biology. Cats, descended from desert-adapted ancestors, tend to have a lower thirst driv…

Dogs and cats represent contrasting domestication stories, and comparing them clarifies what domestication means. This overview surveys the differences: dogs descend from wolves through a long, intens…

Dogs are famed for their sense of smell, and comparing them with cats puts feline olfaction in perspective. This overview surveys estimates that cats possess a large but somewhat smaller repertoire of…

Several studies have tested how well cats exploit human-given cues, such as pointing, gazing, or tapping, to find hidden food in object-choice tasks. This overview surveys the range of cues cats can a…

Beyond learning from other cats, researchers have asked whether cats can copy or learn from human demonstrators. This overview surveys exploratory studies, including reports that cats can be trained t…

Whether cats catch or respond to the emotions of others is an active research question. This overview surveys studies examining whether cats are affected by their owners' emotional states, respond to…

The domestic cat genome carries endogenous retroviral sequences related to FeLV, remnants of ancient germline infections that are inherited rather than transmitted. These endogenous elements can recom…

Feline genomes carry endogenous retroviruses, the genomic remnants of ancient viral infections, and the related infectious feline leukemia virus, which together offer insights into host-virus coevolut…

Anecdotes describe cats approaching distressed owners, and researchers have begun testing whether cats respond differentially to human emotional signals such as crying. This overview surveys explorato…