Discovery of Tiny New Cat Species in Bolivia Forces Scientists to Redraw the Feline Family Tree

Researchers have identified a new species of wild cat for the first time in over a century.

A study in the journal Current Biology published on Thursday, September 17, describes the Leopardus tilcayo, or the tilcayo tiger cat, as being smaller than a domestic cat but clearly a wild animal.

They live in the Bolivian Yungas, where the Andes mountains meet the Amazon basin, but at this stage it is unclear how big the cat population is.

According to a report from NBC News, the cat would likely have remained unidentified if it wasn’t for Paola Nogales-Ascarrunz, who co-authored the study and leads a wild cat conservation program called Programa de Investigación de Félidos Bolivia (Bolivian Felid Research and Conservation Program).

She volunteers at a wildlife rehabilitation center near La Paz and a cat was brought in unlike the others.

“I saw this cat. It was really, really small, and I couldn’t believe how small it was,” Nogales-Ascarrunz recalled. “I thought it was a kitten.”

A man had taken the cat in believing it to be a domestic kitten and fed it noodles, rice and eggs but after a year realized it needed to roam in the wild.

Nogales-Ascarrunz did some genetic testing using tissue from the tiger cat and a second animal that also turned up at Senda Verde.

The results from those specimens revealed that the two cats were unique and from the same species. They had diverged from other tiger cat lineages about 1.4 million years ago. This is considered enough genetic distance for it to be described as a new species.

Further research showed the local community had been aware of the tilcayo tiger cat for generations but had no idea the animal was unknown to the scientific world.

“This cat, they call it tilcayo. And when you ask, ‘Does it have some meaning in Quechua or Almyra and other Indigenous languages?’ they say, ‘No, my grandpa told me that’s the tilcayo,'” Nogales-Ascarrunz said. “This is a traditional knowledge that they have in the community. We want to preserve that knowledge and we didn’t want to give it another name.”

The discovery has been described as “monumental” in part because it’s the first new cat discovered since the pampas cat in 1923. It also means the cat family tree needs to be redrawn and raises the prospect of further new cat species being found across the world.