🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

This influential comparative study estimated bite forces across a broad range of living and extinct mammalian carnivores using dry-skull dissection methods and lever modelling, then scaled the results…

Wroe, S.; McHenry, C.; Thomason, J. · Proceedings of the Royal Society B · 2005

Terborgh and colleagues exploited a natural experiment created by a Venezuelan hydroelectric reservoir that isolated land-bridge islands lacking large predators such as jaguars and pumas. On predator-…

Terborgh, J., Lopez, L., Nunez, P. et al. · Science · 2001

This study extended earlier work on feline melanism by surveying agouti signaling protein and melanocortin-1 receptor variation across wild cat species, including the leopard. The authors characterize…

Alexsandra Schneider, Eduardo Eizirik, et al. · PLoS ONE · 2012

Every GPS collar embodies a compromise: more frequent fixes reveal finer movement detail but drain the battery faster, shortening the tracking period. This overview examines how researchers schedule f…

Captive big cats commonly require dental procedures, especially for fractured canine teeth, and these interventions demand careful general anesthesia given the size, danger, and physiologic vulnerabil…

Measuring whether a conservation intervention actually helped requires comparing outcomes against a credible counterfactual of what would have happened otherwise. This overview surveys quasi-experimen…

The most realistic forecasts of cat futures combine climate change with land-use change, since for many forest cats habitat conversion is the faster, larger threat. This overview surveys how integrate…

Jaguars and other Neotropical cats inhabit diverse tropical ecosystems where they encounter a wide array of pathogens and parasites, though their disease ecology remains less studied than that of Afri…

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…

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…

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…

Roads, railways, dams, and energy infrastructure are expanding rapidly through tropical and montane cat habitat, fragmenting landscapes and opening forests to settlement and hunting. This overview sur…

Across much of Latin America jaguars and pumas occur together, and their coexistence is mediated by differences in prey, habitat, and behavior. This overview synthesizes research showing that jaguars…

Combinations of the alpha-2 agonist medetomidine (or dexmedetomidine) with the dissociative ketamine are a mainstay for immobilizing large felids, valued because the alpha-2 component provides sedatio…

Despite decades of study, major gaps remain in understanding disease in wild felids, particularly for less-studied species and regions. This overview surveys the priorities and unanswered questions in…

Rivers, streams, and the vegetated strips along them often serve as natural movement corridors for cats, offering cover, water, prey, and continuous habitat threading through otherwise open or develop…

Why can lions and tigers roar while domestic cats and cheetahs cannot? This comparative anatomical study examined the hyoid apparatus, the chain of bones supporting the larynx and tongue, across felid…

Gerald Weissengruber and colleagues · Journal of Anatomy · 2002

This comprehensive reference compiled the biology, ecology, and conservation status of all the world's wild cat species, from the great roaring cats to the smallest felids. Drawing together field stud…

Sunquist, M. E., Sunquist, F. C. · University of Chicago Press · 2002