Mammals
Fishing Cat
Prionailurus viverrinus · also called fishing cat
The fishing cat is a wild cat that behaves the way people imagine cats never would: it wades into marshes, swims after its prey, and dives under the surface to catch fish and grab waterbirds from below. Stocky, short-legged, and about twice the weight of a house cat, it is a specialist of the Asian wetlands that are vanishing around it.
Overview
Fishing cats live in marshes, reedbeds, mangroves, and slow rivers across South and Southeast Asia, from the Himalayan foothills to Sri Lanka, coastal Thailand, and Java. Head and body run 57–78 cm, with a short thick tail, and weight ranges from about 5 kg in a small female to 16 kg in a large male. The coat is olive-grey with rows of dark spots that streak into lines along the back.
Built for water
The fishing cat has a dense, water-shedding double coat, small low-set ears, and partial webbing between its toes. It swims strongly, sometimes submerged, and hunts by watching the water from a bank or while wading, then hooking fish out with a paw or diving fully under to take them.
A wetland life
Fish are the largest part of its diet — unusual for a cat — supplemented by frogs, crabs, water snakes, rodents, and birds. The animal is tightly bound to wetlands and disappears when they are drained, built over, or turned into shrimp and fish farms.
Status
The fishing cat is listed as Vulnerable and declining. Wetland destruction, pollution, collapsing fish stocks, road deaths, and retaliatory killing have fragmented it into small, isolated populations and erased it from parts of its former range. In India it is the state animal of West Bengal and a flagship for protecting the region’s marshes.
Fishing Cat: common questions
Do fishing cats actually fish?
Yes, fishing is central to how they live. A fishing cat will sit or crouch at the edge of a marsh or stream, watch the water, and flip fish out with a fast paw strike, and it will also wade in and swim after prey, including diving right under the surface. There are old reports of the cats tapping the water with a paw to imitate insect movement and draw fish closer, though this is not well documented. Fish are the largest single part of the diet across most studies, which is unusual for a cat, and the animal's webbed toes, water-shedding coat, and willingness to swim all point to a genuine aquatic hunter rather than a cat that merely lives near water.
How big is a fishing cat compared to a house cat?
Considerably bigger and much more solidly built. A domestic cat usually weighs 3 to 5 kg, while a fishing cat runs from about 5 kg in a small female to 16 kg in a large male. The body is longer, the chest deeper, the legs shorter and thicker, and the head broader, so even a mid-sized fishing cat looks stocky and powerful next to a pet cat. The coat is olive-grey with rows of dark spots that merge into stripes along the back, the tail is short and thick, and the ears are small and set low, all of which give it a distinctive heavy-set appearance.
Why is the fishing cat endangered?
Because its habitat is among the most heavily altered on Earth. Fishing cats depend on wetlands, and across Asia marshes and mangroves have been drained for farmland, built over by expanding cities, and converted into aquaculture ponds for shrimp and fish. Water pollution and the collapse of fish stocks remove its food, roads cause deaths, and the cats are sometimes killed in retaliation for taking farmed fish or poultry, or hunted for their skins and meat. Because the surviving populations are broken into small, separated pockets of wetland, they are also vulnerable to local extinction, and the species is listed as Vulnerable.
Are fishing cats dangerous to people?
Not really. They are secretive, mostly nocturnal, and avoid humans, and there is no pattern of fishing cats attacking people. They can be bold and will raid fish ponds, chicken coops, and sometimes take small livestock, which brings them into conflict with farmers, and a cornered or trapped fishing cat will defend itself fiercely like any wild cat. But in normal circumstances a person is far more likely to live near fishing cats for years without seeing one than to have any kind of dangerous encounter with them.