Research overview: margay diet and arboreal hunting

Dietary studies describe the margay as a hunter of small vertebrates taken both in the trees and on the ground, including small rodents, birds, opossums, lizards, tree frogs, and invertebrates. This overview synthesizes scat and observational data indicating that the species arboreal agility lets it exploit canopy prey less accessible to ground-bound cats, while it also forages at lower levels. The diet overlaps with sympatric small cats, and temporal and vertical partitioning likely reduce competition. Understanding the margay diet is valuable because it links the cat to the rich small-vertebrate communities of intact forest canopies, reinforcing why forest structural complexity, not just forest cover, underpins the species persistence across its Neotropical range.