🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Inskip and Zimmermann produced a comprehensive global review of conflict between people and wild cats, synthesising the geography, drivers, and severity of conflict across all felid species. They iden…

Chloe Inskip, Alexandra Zimmermann · Oryx · 2009

Palomares and Caro compiled and analyzed the global record of carnivores killing other carnivores, establishing intraguild predation as a widespread structuring force. They showed that interspecific k…

Palomares, F. & Caro, T.M. · The American Naturalist · 1999

Lentiviruses related to domestic-cat FIV circulate widely in wild felid species including lions, pumas, leopards, and others, often at high seroprevalence yet apparently with limited disease in their…

High-resolution GPS tracking combined with accelerometers and other biologgers has transformed the study of how felids behave near people, enabling fine-scale analysis of movement, activity, energetic…

An overview of how the advent of GPS telemetry transformed estimation of kill rates for solitary cats such as pumas, leopards and lynx. The approach identifies spatial clusters of frequent locations,…

Serosurveys consistently reveal high Toxoplasma exposure in wild felids, reflecting their role as both definitive hosts and predators of infected prey. This overview synthesizes prevalence patterns ac…

A survey of how cats do not take prey at random but select particular age and sex classes, with consequences for prey populations. Felids frequently kill disproportionately young, old or otherwise vul…

As apex predators, big cats can exert top-down control that ripples through ecosystems via trophic cascades. This overview synthesizes evidence that lions, tigers, leopards, pumas, and jaguars influen…

An overview of how solitary cats protect and prolong access to their kills by caching them. Pumas cover carcasses with vegetation and soil and revisit them over several days, while leopards famously h…

An overview of how the kills of large felids redistribute energy and nutrients through ecosystems. Carcasses and the cats' partly eaten remains create nutrient hotspots that fertilize soils and vegeta…

From leopards in Mumbai to pumas in Los Angeles, caracals in Cape Town and fishing cats in Colombo, a remarkable diversity of felids inhabits the worlds cities, offering a comparative window on urban…

Drought intensifies competition between people and predators for scarce water, forage, and livestock, often heightening human-wildlife conflict. This overview surveys how dry periods push cats toward…

A survey of how the kills of large cats function as a form of ecosystem engineering, structuring scavenger communities, nutrient flow and local biodiversity. Because predators such as pumas, leopards…

A survey of the conditions under which big cats switch from hunting to scavenging, and what this means for their ecology. Although large felids lack the scavenging specializations of hyenas and vultur…

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…

This overview synthesises emerging priorities and frontiers in human-big cat conflict and coexistence research. It reviews calls for more rigorous impact evaluation, greater integration of social scie…

Vehicle collisions are a leading direct cause of death for felids in human-dominated landscapes worldwide, from pumas on Los Angeles freeways to leopard cats on Taiwan rural roads and fishing cats in…

This overview synthesises evidence on why deterrents, lights, sirens, scent, and visual scarecrows, often lose effectiveness as predators habituate. It examines the behavioural ecology of neophobia an…

The advent of GPS collars and biologging sensors has revolutionized the study of big-cat movement, hunting, and energetics. This overview synthesizes how high-resolution location data revealed kill si…

A survey of the lethal interactions between cats and dogs that share prey and space, a major structuring force in carnivore communities. Lions and hyenas kill wild dogs and cheetahs; pumas and coyotes…

This overview synthesises studies identifying which landscape and management variables predict where big cats kill livestock, a recurring quantitative question across conflict research. It reviews con…

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…

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…

Net squared displacement, the squared straight-line distance from a starting point over time, provides a simple but powerful way to classify whole-trajectory movement strategies. This overview describ…

A survey of how felids exploit the seasonal pulse of newborn ungulates, a period of high vulnerability that can dominate annual recruitment losses. During calving and fawning seasons, abundant, hidden…

An overview of the behavioral defenses ungulates and other prey deploy against felid predators, from vigilance scanning to alarm signaling and habitat avoidance. Because cats are stealthy ambush hunte…

A survey of how big cats process and consume their kills, and why handling time matters for kill-rate estimation and competition. Larger carcasses take longer to consume and force predators to remain…

This overview examines the persistent gap between perceived and actual risk in human-big cat conflict, a theme cutting across lion, tiger, leopard, puma, and jaguar systems. It synthesises research sh…

An overview of how much carrion features in the diets of cats traditionally viewed as pure hunters. While felids are generally more reliant on fresh kills than canids or hyaenids, many will scavenge o…