Get the app
Location
BreedQuest › Stories › Wild

Behaviour

Open topic →
A wild grey wolf pack of adults and pups resting together on a snowy ridge at dawn
Field guide

The Alpha Wolf Myth: How a Pack Really Works

The alpha wolf was invented in a captive enclosure. In the wild a pack is a family led by parents, and your dog isn't fighting you for rank.

7 min read

More

A Pallas's cat, a stocky wild cat with dense grey fur and a flat face, staring intently
Field guide

8 small wild cats you've never heard of

Eight small wild cats — from the deadliest hunter on Earth to the ancestor of your housecat — and where each one still lives.

8 min read
A European wildcat with a thick black-ringed tail standing among the leaf litter of an Apennine beech forest at dusk
Field guide

Italian wildcat: spotting a true Felis silvestris

Italy has a genuine native wild cat hiding in its forests. Here is how to tell one from a big farmyard tabby, and why it needs protecting.

6 min read
A large Ice Age wolf standing at the edge of a firelit hunter-gatherer camp at dusk
Field guide

How the wolf became the dog

The tamest wolves fed themselves at our campfires and bred a new animal into existence. The full, honestly bounded story.

7 min read
A gray wolf mid-howl, head raised and muzzle pointed skyward, breath visible in cold air
Field guide

Why wolves howl (and why not at the moon)

A howl is a phone call, a fence, and a family song rolled into one. What it does, and why the moon has nothing to do with it.

6 min read
An Apennine wolf standing on a rocky ridge in the Italian mountains at dawn, greyish-fawn coat with dark forelegs
Field guide

The Apennine wolf: Italy's own wolf, back from the brink

Hunted to about 100 animals by the 1970s, Italy's own wolf clawed back to several thousand. Here's the honest recovery story and the modern threats.

6 min read
A European wildcat standing in leaf litter at the edge of a broadleaf wood, its thick black-ringed tail held low and faint dark stripes running along grey-brown flanks
Field guide

European wildcat: the cat Europe cannot count

Felis silvestris was only assessed as a species in its own right in 2022, and its official population trend is one word: unknown.

7 min read
A Scottish wildcat in Highland woodland, broad-headed and heavily striped, its thick tail marked with black rings
Field guide

Scottish wildcat: not extinct, not a subspecies

The most-quoted fact about the Scottish wildcat misstates its own source. What the 2019 IUCN review really said, and where the cats stand in 2026.

7 min read
An African wildcat, Felis lybica, standing alert in dry grass at dusk, its long legs and slim tapered tail clearly visible
Field guide

African wildcat: the real ancestor of your cat

Your cat descends from Felis lybica, a North African animal most people cannot name. In November 2025 the standard account of how it reached Europe broke.

7 min read
A grey-brown tabby cat with sharp thin stripes, a slim tapering tail and a small white patch on its chest, sitting at dusk on the boundary between dark forest and open farmland
Data desk

Wildcat hybridisation: how a species gets absorbed

Even a low crossbreeding rate assimilates a wildcat population past halfway inside a century. Why "only a few hybrids" is not the reassurance it sounds like.

7 min read
A wildlife geneticist's gloved hands sealing a small labelled sample tube holding a tuft of grey-brown cat hair, on a cluttered field research bench
Data desk

European wildcat vs domestic cat: how to tell

You cannot do it by eye. On the same cats, coat scoring rated 0.854 and the genome 0.984, and the strict visual cut-off loses real wildcats.

8 min read
Dense old broadleaf woodland along a stream, mossy deadwood on the bank, a European wildcat half-hidden low in the undergrowth.
Field guide

The forest a European wildcat actually needs

Woodland to shelter and den in, open edge to hunt over, and corridors between the two. What the radio-tracking and genetics really show.

7 min read
A wildlife camera trap strapped to a mossy beech trunk in quiet, bare-canopied forest.
Data desk

Wildcat conservation: law, cameras and cryptic extinction

How you save a species you cannot count: the law, the genetics labs, and the honest gap between what works and what is only worth trying.

7 min read
A wildcat crossing a misty forest clearing at dawn, small against a large wooded landscape.
Field guide

Where do wildcats live? The two-species map

Since 2017 the wildcat is two species, not one. Here is where each lives, why the US bobcat isn't one, and where the map is still being drawn.

7 min read