🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Legge and colleagues tackled a foundational question for cat management by estimating the total feral cat population across Australia. They compiled density estimates from dozens of sites and modelled…

Sarah Legge, Brett P. Murphy, Hugh McGregor, et al. · Biological Conservation · 2017

Blancher estimated the annual mortality of birds caused by cats in Canada, applying methods similar to large-scale predation assessments elsewhere. By combining figures on the numbers of pet and feral…

Peter Blancher · Avian Conservation and Ecology · 2013

Woinarski and colleagues estimated the toll that cats take on Australian birds, combining data on cat density, distribution and diet across the continent. They calculated that feral cats in natural en…

John C. Z. Woinarski, Brett P. Murphy, Sarah M. Legge, et al. · Biological Conservation · 2017

Extending their continental analysis of cat predation, Woinarski and colleagues estimated the number of reptiles killed by cats in Australia. Using data on cat density, dietary frequency of reptiles a…

John C. Z. Woinarski, Brett P. Murphy, Russell Palmer, et al. · Wildlife Research · 2018

This comparative study applied trait ratings to multiple felid species, including domestic cats, African lions, snow leopards, clouded leopards, and Scottish wildcats, to ask whether personality dimen…

Marieke Gartner, David Powell, Alexander Weiss · Journal of Comparative Psychology · 2014

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…

Allonursing, the nursing of non-offspring, is best documented in lions but reported in other group-living or colonial felid contexts, including domestic cat colonies. This overview surveys research on…

Cooperation is rare among felids, concentrated in the social lion and in cheetah and feral-cat male coalitions, making the family a useful contrast for theories of cooperation. This overview surveys r…

An overview of the substantial toll free-ranging domestic cats take on wild birds, small mammals, reptiles and amphibians in urban, suburban and rural landscapes. Both owned outdoor cats and unowned f…

The response to catnip and related iridoids is not unique to domestic cats; various wild felids also react. This overview surveys reports that some big cats, such as lions and others, show interest in…

An overview of how the scent of felid predators alone can suppress prey foraging, movement and reproduction, demonstrating nonconsumptive effects without any direct attack. Prey detect chemical cues o…

Numerical cognition has been studied extensively in birds and primates, and a smaller body of work asks whether cats discriminate quantities. This overview surveys experiments testing whether cats can…

Retinal ganglion cells are the output neurons of the eye, and their density sets an upper limit on visual acuity. In cats, ganglion cell counts peak in the area centralis and along a horizontal visual…

A key reason cats see well in dim light is that many rods feed into each downstream neuron, a wiring strategy called convergence or spatial summation. By pooling the faint signals of hundreds of rods,…

The sex ratio of felid litters and any biases in maternal investment toward sons or daughters bear on population dynamics and evolutionary theory. This overview surveys evidence for sex ratio patterns…

The vertical slit pupil of small cats is a striking feature, and this overview reviews why such pupils evolved. Comparative work links vertical slit pupils to small ambush predators active across a wi…

Serological and molecular surveys of wild felid populations have documented widespread infection with species-specific lentiviruses related to FIV, often at high prevalence in lions and pumas, general…

Unlike the primate fovea, the cat's region of sharpest vision is a broader, shallower zone called the area centralis. This survey reviews what is known about its photoreceptor and ganglion cell compos…

Night vision depends not only on rods but on a dedicated downstream circuit that carries their signals into the rest of the retina. This survey reviews the rod bipolar to AII amacrine cell pathway, a…

Alongside the area centralis, the cat retina has a horizontally elongated band of higher ganglion cell density known as the visual streak. This overview surveys the role of the visual streak, which pr…

Although domestic cats have vertical-slit pupils, large felids such as lions and tigers have round pupils, a contrast that has attracted scientific attention. This overview surveys the explanation tie…

This widely cited quantitative synthesis estimated that free-ranging domestic cats in the contiguous United States kill billions of birds and tens of billions of mammals annually, with unowned cats re…

Scott Loss, Tom Will, Peter Marra · Nature Communications · 2013

Loss, Will and Marra produced a landmark quantitative estimate of how many wild animals free-ranging cats kill in the United States. Synthesizing data from predation studies through a systematic revie…

Scott R. Loss, Tom Will, Peter P. Marra · Nature Communications · 2013

Prugh and colleagues synthesized global evidence that the worldwide decline of apex predators has triggered widespread increases in mid-sized carnivores, with far-reaching ecological and economic cons…

Prugh, L.R., Stoner, C.J., Epps, C.W., Bean, W.T. et al. · BioScience · 2009