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Many species of carnivorous mammals (Order Carnivora) consume fleshy fruits, transport seeds in their digestive tracts, and defecate them without damage in conditions that are suitable for germination. In this article, we review the state of the art on this mutualism in the past three decades, since three pioneering studies revealed the importance of carnivores as seed dispersers in temperate ecosystems. We focus on the functional traits of carnivores consuming fruits and disseminating seeds, with particular emphasis on their differences with birds, the main group of vertebrate frugivores in temperate ecosystems. Carnivores are not subject to the phonological or morphological constraints that typically limit the consumption of certain fruit species in many bird species. They preferably consume fruits whose traits are shared with many fruit species cultivated by man, which explains the frequent consumption of cultivated …