With its large size and massive jaws and teeth,[25] C. spelea was a formidable, "puma-like"[26] predator, and in addition to smaller lemurids, it may have eaten some of the big, now extinct subfossil lemurs that would have been too large for C. ferox.[27] No subfossil evidence has been found to definitively show that lemurs were its prey; this assumption is based on the diet of the smaller, extant species of fossa.[28] Other possible prey include tenrecs, smaller euplerids, and even young Malagasy hippopotamuses.[29] Its extinction may have changed predation dynamics on Madagascar.