Teacher Background: The Fishing Cat's Diet

The fishing cat is a wetland specialist found in South and Southeast Asia, and the IUCN lists it as Vulnerable. Fish are its main food, but it is a flexible hunter. Published diet studies and conservation sources list crabs, frogs, snails and mollusks, snakes, rodents, water insects, and birds as additional prey, and the mix varies by region and season. It is mostly active at night and generally hunts alone. Adults have few natural predators, though they share range with larger cats such as tigers and leopards. Major threats include wetland loss, pollution, and overfishing that reduces its prey. Please confirm which prey animals the video itself names so the class chain matches the footage.

Before Watching

Ask students: "What do you think the fishing cat eats? Where do you think that food gets its energy?" Chart predictions. Then ask: "What did you eat today? Can we trace it back to a plant or the sun?" Revisit the chart after viewing.

Viewing Guide

• What does the fishing cat eat?
• How does the fishing cat catch its food? Which body parts or behaviors help?
• Where does the fishing cat live, and what other living things might share that home?
• How do baby fishing cats learn to hunt?

After Watching – Discussion

• What did the fishing cat eat in the video? Were you surprised? (Fish is the main food, but it also eats other animals.)
• Where did the fish get its energy? Where did the food the fish ate get its energy? (Guide students back to the sun.)
• Which way should the arrow point: from the fish to the cat, or from the cat to the fish? Why? (Arrows show where the energy goes.)
• What would happen to the fishing cat if the fish in its wetland disappeared?

Hands-On Activity: Build the Model

Students work in partners or groups of three with the Grades 3–5 printable cards (12 organism cards, arrow cards, role label cards) and the student handout.

Part 1 – Food chain (8 minutes): Students choose cards to build at least one food chain that starts with the Sun and ends with the Fishing Cat, using arrow cards between each pair. Arrows point from the food to the eater. Example: Sun → Algae & Water Plants → Small Fish → Fishing Cat.

Part 2 – Food web (8 minutes): Students glue all the organism cards onto a sheet of chart paper and connect them with arrows to show every "who eats whom" link they can justify. They then sort role label cards (producer, consumer, decomposer; herbivore, carnivore, omnivore) onto the organism cards and complete the role table on the handout.

Part 3 – Remove a card (5 minutes): Teacher announces: "A wetland is drained for farmland and the Small Fish disappear." Students remove that card and use their arrows to predict what happens to the fishing cat and to every organism that ate or was eaten by the fish. They record two or three sentences in the handout.

• Arrow direction is the biggest stumbling block. Many students draw arrows from the eater to the food ("the cat eats the fish"). Repeat the anchor phrase often: the arrow shows where the energy goes.
• Energy starts with the sun. Make this explicit; the web's single Sun card is what connects every chain.
• The fishing cat is not only a fish-eater. Use that to show why a food web is a better model than one chain, and why losing wetland habitat affects more than just the fish.
• Decomposers are easy to skip but complete the cycle (5-LS2-1). Show that nutrients return to the water for plants to use again.
• The organism cards represent a typical Asian wetland and may not match the exact species in the video. Keep your discussion consistent with the footage.
• The Remove a Card step connects to the conservation message in the secondary lessons without requiring genetics or IUCN vocabulary.

Vocabulary

• Food chain – a line of living things that shows who eats whom and how energy moves from one to the next
• Energy – what living things need to grow, move, and stay warm; in a food chain it starts with the sun
• Producer – a living thing, like a plant or algae, that makes its own food using energy from the sun
• Consumer – a living thing that gets energy by eating other living things
• Predator / Prey – an animal that hunts (predator) and the animal it hunts (prey)
• Herbivore / Carnivore / Omnivore – a consumer that eats plants / eats other animals / eats both
• Decomposer – a living thing, like bacteria or fungi, that breaks down dead plants and animals and returns nutrients to the ecosystem
• Food web – many food chains linked together in one habitat
• Wetland – land that is covered with water, like a marsh or mangrove forest

Differentiation

Struggling Students

• Pre-teach "producer" and "consumer" with real examples (an apple tree vs. a student eating lunch) before the video.
• Provide a partially built chain (e.g., Sun → Algae → ___ → Fishing Cat) so students fill in the missing link.
• Reduce the food web to six cards (Sun, Algae & Water Plants, Small Fish, Frog, Water Insect, Fishing Cat) and give a color-coded role table.
• Post the anchor sentence: "The arrow points to the one that gets the energy."

English Language Learners

• Pair every vocabulary word with a picture or gesture (sun, plant, fish, arrow = "gives energy to").
• Provide a bilingual picture glossary where available for producer, consumer, predator, prey, and decomposer.
• Offer sentence frames: "The ___ eats the ___." and "The energy goes from the ___ to the ___."
• Allow card labels in the home language alongside English, and pair with a peer for the discussion.

Students with IEPs / 504 Plans

• Allow the video to be paused when prey or hunting is shown, giving processing time to name what is happening.
• Offer tactile cards (laminated or magnetic) so students can sequence without cutting or gluing.
• Accept the exit ticket as a verbal response, a card sequence, or a matching task.
• Provide extended time, a visual schedule of the lesson steps, and preferential seating near the screen. Consider noise-reducing headphones for sensitive students.

Advanced / Gifted Learners

• Add a second chain that includes a decomposer and explain how nutrients return to the wetland for plants to use again.
• Explain why a food web is a more accurate model than a single chain, using the fishing cat's varied diet as evidence.
• Use the "draw your own" cards to add a second predator to the web and predict how it would change what happens when a card is removed.
• Complete the diet data graph in the Extension section and write a conclusion about what the data shows.

Extensions

Fishing Cat Diet Graph (Math Connection)

Give students data from a published fishing cat diet study in the Godavari Delta, India (percent of prey items found in scat samples): fish 36.6%, crabs 17.8%, rodents 16.8%, birds 14.8%, snakes 11.4%, other (mollusks, insects) 2.5%. Students make a bar graph and write one conclusion. Discuss that this is one study in one place, and that diets differ by region and season. Source: "Fish on the platter! Investigating the dietary habits of fishing cats in the Godavari Delta, India" (bioRxiv preprint, 2023).

360 Habitat Tour: What Supports the Food Chain?

Watch the Fishing Cat 360 Habitat Tour. Have students look for habitat features that a fishing cat's wild food chain depends on (water, plants, places for prey to live) and discuss how the zoo's feeding plan stands in for wild hunting.

My South Carolina Food Chain

Students build a food chain from a South Carolina habitat such as a saltmarsh (sun → marsh grass → small fish or crab → a larger predator) and compare it with the fishing cat's wetland. Discuss what is the same (energy starts with the sun, a producer comes first) and what is different (the animals).

Wetland Mural: Protect the Web

In small groups, students draw one part of a wetland food web on a class mural, then add a "Protect the Web" idea (keep wetlands clean, avoid overfishing) to show how people help every link in the chain.

Ask the Zoo

Students write questions for a zookeeper about what a zoo fishing cat eats and why, then compare the zoo diet with the wild diet from the video.

Answer Key

Sample accepted arrows (energy flow): Sun → Algae & Water Plants; Algae & Water Plants → Snail, Water Insect, Small Fish, Crab, Rodent; Water Insect → Frog, Small Fish, Water Bird; Snail → Crab; Small Fish → Water Bird, Snake, Fishing Cat; Frog → Snake, Water Bird, Fishing Cat; Rodent → Snake, Fishing Cat; Crab → Fishing Cat; Snake → Fishing Cat; Water Bird → Fishing Cat; every organism → Bacteria & Fungi when it dies. Accept any accurate links that students can justify.

Sample chains: Sun → Algae → Small Fish → Fishing Cat.  Sun → Water Plants → Water Insect → Frog → Fishing Cat. Sun → Plants → Rodent → Snake → Fishing Cat.

Remove a Card (Small Fish removed): the Fishing Cat, Water Bird, and Snake lose one food source and must rely more on frogs, crabs, rodents, or other prey; algae may grow more because fewer fish eat it. Accept reasoned predictions that follow the arrows.

1. Exit Ticket

"Explain in 2–3 sentences where the fishing cat's energy first came from. Use the words sun, producer, and consumer."

Grade 5 option (CER): "Claim: The fishing cat depends on the sun. Support your claim with evidence from your food web and explain your reasoning."

2. Simple 3-Point Rubric

Score the content, not the format. Verbal, drawn, or card-sequence responses all count.