The Felines Family

The feline family, which scientists call Felidae, is the family of cats: around 40 wild species plus the domestic cat. It runs from the house cat asleep on a windowsill to the tiger, the largest cat on Earth, with the cheetah, puma, lynx, caracal, leopard, jaguar and lion in between. However different they look, every member shares the same build: a flexible skeleton, strong hind legs, whiskers, soft paw pads and a body made for stalking prey.

Small cats and big cats: how the family is split

Biologists divide the living cats into two branches. The big cats are the lion, tiger, leopard and jaguar, along with the snow leopard and the clouded leopards. The small cats are everyone else, a much longer list that includes some animals that are not small at all, such as the cheetah and the puma. The split follows ancestry, not size.

The domestic cat

The house cat is one of the most popular pets in the world thanks to its affection and its famous cleanliness. This single species is divided into dozens of recognized breeds with a wide range of coat colors, and it is found on every inhabited continent, with the largest numbers in Europe and Asia. Domestication never erased its hunting instinct, and the family resemblance runs deep: see what a tiger and a house cat share.

The cheetah

The cheetah is the fastest land animal, able to reach about 112 km/h (70 mph) with its slim, light frame. Even so, only about half its hunts succeed. Its coat of black spots on a beige background blends into the grasslands and open plains of eastern and southern Africa, where most cheetahs live, with small populations in North Africa and Iran.

The puma

Also called the cougar, the puma is one of the few cats with a plain coat, which ranges from brown to grayish depending on where it lives. It is found only in the Americas, across South America and in part of North America, from the snowy mountains of the Andes to the tropical forests of Central America.

The lynx and the caracal

The lynx is easy to spot by its pointed ears tipped with tufts of black hair and its long hind legs. Apart from the domestic cat, it is one of only two cats living wild in France, the other being the European wildcat, and it also lives in North America and Central Asia. Even the Eurasian lynx, the largest, rarely reaches 30 kilograms, so it hunts prey from birds up to small deer. It is solitary, territorial and not currently threatened.

The caracal is often mistaken for a lynx because of its large, pointed, black-backed ears, but it is a species of its own with a plain coat. It lives across much of Africa and, more rarely, in southwest Asia. In that heat it hunts at night or at dawn, and its slight build means lions and leopards can prey on it.

The painting below lines up three big cats, a tiger, a spotted cat and a snow leopard, and many more hang in our tiger canvas collection, from photographic scenes to watercolor heads.

The big cats: leopard, jaguar, lion and tiger

The leopard

The leopard is the most widespread big cat, living across much of Africa and Asia, including India and the rest of South Asia. It prefers forests but also lives in mountains and savanna, and its spotted coat makes it nearly invisible to prey. An average male weighs about 60 kilograms, small for a big cat, yet its powerful jaws let it haul a carcass heavier than itself up into a tree, where it can eat in peace.

The jaguar

The jaguar, native to Central and South America, is often confused with the leopard. It is heavier and more massive, climbs less, is more at home on the ground and in water, and its spots are generally larger, darker and fewer. For a side by side look, read how to tell a jaguar from a leopard. Its bite is considered the most powerful of all cats, strong enough to pierce a turtle shell, and unlike most cats it often kills with a bite straight to the skull. Curious how it would fare against the largest cat? See can a jaguar kill a tiger.

What about the panther?

The panther is not a species of its own. The word usually means a leopard, and it is also used for the puma. The famous black panther is a leopard or a jaguar with a black coat, and in good light its spots still show through. Our guide on whether a panther is a jaguar clears up the names.

The lion

Recognizable by the male's large mane, the lion is the top predator of the African savanna, where open ground lets it spot prey from far away and charge at up to 80 km/h. Weighing around 200 kilograms, it can take prey as large as buffalo. The lion is the only truly social cat: it lives in groups called prides and shares its kills. Lionesses do much of the hunting, but males hunt too.

The tiger

The tiger is the largest cat species, with a weight that can approach 220 kilograms. It lives mainly in India and neighboring countries, and also in Southeast Asia, on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, in the Russian Far East and in northeastern China. Solitary and usually wary of people, it relies on its striped camouflage to get close, then kills with a precise bite to the neck. Only about 1 in 10 to 20 of its hunts succeeds, yet it can take crocodiles, buffalo and even young elephants. In a worldwide count of attacks from 1950 to 2019, it ranked second only to the sloth bear among large carnivores for attacks on humans, and it is listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List.

How to recognize a feline

Whatever their size, cats share a recognizable body plan. A flexible skeleton gives them supple, fluid movement, and their hind legs are more muscular than their front legs, which lets them leap high and sprint fast. Look at the face and you will see vibrissae, the whiskers around the muzzle and cheeks that serve as a sense of touch. Under the paws, soft pads muffle every step, ideal for an animal that hunts by surprise.

The hunting kit is just as consistent. A cat's eyes need only about a sixth of the light that human eyes need, so they see well at dusk, though not in total darkness. Short, strong jaws carry long, sharp canines. And with few exceptions, cats hunt the same way: they use cover and patience to creep as close as they can, then pounce, finishing with a bite to the neck or the skull. Sculptors love that crouched, ready-to-spring pose, and you will find it in our tiger figurine collection.

How cats live: alone, asleep and in touch by scent

Apart from the lion, cats are solitary. Young cats leave their mother early to claim a territory of their own, hunt without help and spend most of their lives alone, meeting others mainly to mate. They are also great sleepers: a typical cat can spend up to 18 hours a day resting and the rest of its time patrolling its land.

Living alone does not mean living in silence. Cats can roar, purr or meow, but they are not very talkative and rely more on scent. They mark the edges of their territory with urine, a clear warning to rivals of their own species, and they scratch trees to leave a visible and scented trace for passing females.

Where the cat family came from

Scientists trace cats back to the miacids, small carnivores with long bodies and thin tails, a little like weasels, that lived about 60 million years ago. The picture is incomplete, because fossils rarely survive in humid tropical ground, so most finds come from the drier, colder north.

The saber-toothed tiger is often named as the ancestor of today's cats, but that is a myth. "Saber-toothed cat" describes a whole group of extinct cats with long, visible canines, the best known being Smilodon, which lived from about 2.5 million years ago until about 10,000 years ago. These cats were relatives, not ancestors: their branch split from the line of modern cats about 20 million years ago and then died out. Read more in what a saber-tooth tiger was.

The feline family at a glance

The cat family brings together small house pets and some of the most powerful predators alive. What unites them is a body built for hunting by stealth, the same stalk-and-pounce technique and, with the lion as the one exception, a solitary life kept in order by scent marks and scratches. If two of these cousins have become favorites, the tiger and the black panther share the painting below.