Big cat fundamentals
Lion vs Tiger: Social Hunter and Solitary Hunter
The two largest cats in the world differ far less in size than in the way they organise their lives: one lives in permanent…
Every wild cat species, side by side
The world's wild cats, measured and compared
Choose any two of the 40 living wild cat species and see how they differ in size, speed, habitat, hunting behaviour and conservation status. Every figure is traced to a published assessment or field study, and every profile carries the date it was last reviewed.
40Species profiled
17Compared traits
18Listed as threatened
15Reviewed comparisons
Start here
Pick two species and compare them
Narrow the lists by continent, habitat, genus or Red List category, then select a pair. The result has its own address, so you can save it or send it to someone else.
Reviewed comparisons
Where our editors would begin
Each of these pairings has been written and checked by hand, with context that a table alone cannot give.
Telling look-alikes apart
Jaguar vs Leopard: The Rosette Test and What Lies Behind It
These two spotted cats are separated by an ocean and by a set of anatomical differences that follow directly from what each of…
Different strategies, same landscape
Cheetah vs Leopard: Speed Specialist Beside a Generalist
Two African cats that share the same plains and take similar prey, but that solve the problem of catching it in opposite ways.
Cats of the Americas
Puma vs Jaguar: The Two Large Cats of the New World
They share a continent and often the same forests, yet one belongs to the roaring big cats and the other, despite its size, does…
Altitude and adaptation
Snow Leopard vs Leopard: Two Panthera Cats, Two Climates
Similar names and similar spots hide two very different animals: one a mountain specialist, the other the most adaptable large…
North American look-alikes
Bobcat vs Canada Lynx: Separating Two Short-Tailed Neighbours
They belong to the same genus, share a continent and overlap along a wide band of the northern United States, where telling them…
Species library
From the 500-pound tiger to the two-pound rusty-spotted cat
The family covers an extraordinary range of size and habitat. These profiles are a good place to see how wide that span really is.
Tiger
Panthera tigris
- Weight
- 165–573 lb (75–260 kg)
- Range
- Asia
Snow Leopard
Panthera uncia
- Weight
- 49–121 lb (22–55 kg)
- Range
- Asia
Cheetah
Acinonyx jubatus
- Weight
- 46–159 lb (21–72 kg)
- Range
- Africa, Asia
Jaguar
Panthera onca
- Weight
- 99–265 lb (45–120 kg)
- Range
- North America, South America
Fishing Cat
Prionailurus viverrinus
- Weight
- 11–35 lb (5–16 kg)
- Range
- Asia
Pallas's Cat
Otocolobus manul
- Weight
- 5.5–9.9 lb (2.5–4.5 kg)
- Range
- Asia
Ocelot
Leopardus pardalis
- Weight
- 15–40 lb (7–18 kg)
- Range
- North America, South America
Caracal
Caracal caracal
- Weight
- 15–42 lb (7–19 kg)
- Range
- Africa, Asia
How this library works
Measurements, not verdicts
This is a reference tool, not a contest. We do not stage hypothetical fights or declare a winner, because those questions have no scientific answer and they obscure what the data actually show.
What we do publish is the measurable and the documented: body length and mass ranges as reported in the literature, habitat and range as described in assessments, feeding and activity patterns from field studies, and Red List categories with the year each was published.
Where a figure is uncertain or poorly studied, we say so rather than filling the gap with a confident-sounding number.
Understand the fields
What each compared trait means
Head-body length excludes the tail. Shoulder height is measured standing. Climbing and swimming are graded on documented behaviour, not on assumption.
Conservation
What the Red List categories tell you
A category describes extinction risk, not population size, and a species can be widespread and still declining. Here is how to read them.