The Felinae are a subfamily of the

family Family (from la, familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Idea ...

Felidae Felidae () is the family of mammals in the order Carnivora colloquially referred to as cats, and constitutes a clade. A member of this family is also called a felid (). The term "cat" refers both to felids in general and specifically to the ...

. This subfamily comprises the small cats having a bony

hyoid The hyoid bone (lingual bone or tongue-bone) () is a horseshoe-shaped bone situated in the anterior midline of the neck between the chin and the thyroid cartilage. At rest, it lies between the base of the mandible and the third cervical vertebra. ...

, because of which they are able to

purr A purr is a tonal fluttering sound made by some species of felids and two species of genets. It varies in loudness and tone among species and in the same animal. Felids are a family of mammals that belong to the order Carnivora and are info ...

but not roar. Other authors have proposed an alternative definition for this subfamily: as comprising only the living

conical A cone is a three-dimensional geometric shape that tapers smoothly from a flat base (frequently, though not necessarily, circular) to a point called the apex or vertex. A cone is formed by a set of line segments, half-lines, or lines conn ...

-toothed cat genera with two tribes, the Felini and Pantherini; thus excluding all

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

cat species.

Characteristics

The members of the Felinae have retractile claws that are protected by at least one

cutaneous Skin is the layer of usually soft, flexible outer tissue covering the body of a vertebrate animal, with three main functions: protection, regulation, and sensation. Other animal coverings, such as the arthropod exoskeleton, have different ...

lobe. Their larynx is kept close to the base of the

skull The skull is a bone protective cavity for the brain. The skull is composed of four types of bone i.e., cranial bones, facial bones, ear ossicles and hyoid bone. However two parts are more prominent: the cranium and the mandible. In humans, t ...

by an

ossified Ossification (also called osteogenesis or bone mineralization) in bone remodeling is the process of laying down new bone material by cells named osteoblasts. It is synonymous with bone tissue formation. There are two processes resulting in t ...

hyoid. They can purr owing to the

vocal folds In humans, vocal cords, also known as vocal folds or voice reeds, are folds of throat tissues that are key in creating sounds through vocalization. The size of vocal cords affects the pitch of voice. Open when breathing and vibrating for speech ...

being shorter than . The cheetah ''

Acinonyx ''Acinonyx'' is a genus within the cat family. The only living species of the genus, the cheetah (''A. jubatus''), lives in open grasslands of Africa and Asia. Several fossil remains of cheetah-like cats were excavated that date to the late Pl ...

'' does not have cutaneous sheaths for guarding claws.

Taxonomy

The term 'Felini' was first used in 1817 by

Gotthelf Fischer von Waldheim Gotthelf Fischer von Waldheim (russian: Григо́рий Ива́нович Фи́шер фон Ва́льдгейм, translit=Grigórij Ivánovič Fíšer fon Vál'dgejm; 13 October 1771 – 18 October 1853) was a Saxon anatomist, entomo ...

, at the time for all the cat

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of ...

that had been proposed as belonging to the

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial n ...

''Felis''. In 1917,

Reginald Innes Pocock Reginald Innes Pocock F.R.S. (4 March 1863 – 9 August 1947) was a British zoologist. Pocock was born in Clifton, Bristol, the fourth son of Rev. Nicholas Pocock and Edith Prichard. He began showing interest in natural history at St. Edwar ...

also subordinated the following genera to the Felinae that had been proposed in the course of the 19th century: ''Lynx'', ''Puma'', ''Leptailurus'', ''Prionailurus'', ''Pardofelis'', ''Leopardus'', ''Herpailurus'', ''

Neofelis ''Neofelis'' is a genus comprising two extant cat species in Southeast Asia: the clouded leopard (''Neofelis nebulosa'') of mainland Asia, and the Sunda clouded leopard (''Neofelis diardi'') of Sumatra and Borneo The scientific name ''Neofeli ...

'' and four more. The Felinae and

Pantherinae Pantherinae is a subfamily within the family Felidae; it was named and first described by Reginald Innes Pocock in 1917 as only including the '' Panthera'' species. The Pantherinae genetically diverged from a common ancestor between and . Cha ...

probably diverged about 11.5 million years ago. The genera within the Felinae diverged between 10.67 and 4.23 million years ago. Today, the following living genera and species are recognised as belonging to the Felinae:

Extinct taxa

Phylogeny

The phylogenetic relationships of Felinae are shown in the following cladogram:

References

External links