Research overview: diet of urban fishing cats in Colombo wetlands

Within Colombo, fishing cats exploit a diet centred on fish but extending to rodents, birds, reptiles and human-associated prey available in city wetlands and gardens. This overview synthesises scat and GPS-cluster research on how urban fishing cats partition foraging between natural waterways and anthropogenic resources, and the role of abundant urban rodents and fish in sustaining them. It connects diet to conflict, since fish and poultry raiding shapes human attitudes, and to the species reliance on functioning wetland food webs. The synthesis frames diet as a window onto how a wetland specialist makes a living inside a major South Asian city.