Bolivia's 'Weird Cat' Identified as First New Felid Species in a Century
Scientists have identified Leopardus tilcayo, a new felid species from Bolivia's Yungas forests, marking the first such discovery since 1923.
A chance encounter with an unusual kitten in Bolivia has led researchers to describe the first new felid species discovered in more than a century. The animal, proposed as Leopardus tilcayo, was found to be genetically distinct from other tiger cats, according to a study published in the journal Current Biology.
The story began in 2016, when Bolivian biologist Paola Nogales-Ascarrunz, founder of the Bolivian Felids Research Program, received a call from a wildlife sanctuary about a strange cat. A man had found the kitten on a road near a forest and taken it home, assuming it was a domestic cat. About a year later, he realised the animal was wild and transferred it to the Senda Verde wildlife sanctuary, located on the eastern flank of the Bolivian Andes.
Nogales-Ascarrunz visited the sanctuary and was struck by the animal's appearance. It had a distinctive face, short rounded ears, long whiskers and leopard-like spots. She initially believed it belonged to Leopardus tigrinus, commonly known as the tiger cat, tigrina or oncilla — a species described in 1775 and thought to range across parts of Central and South America, including Bolivia.
A clue emerged in 2019 while Nogales-Ascarrunz was preparing a booklet on Bolivia's cat species. She noticed that the cat she had photographed had much larger rosettes than those in reference images of tiger cats from neighbouring Brazil. The anomaly stayed unresolved for several years until she developed the genetic expertise to investigate further.
Working with geneticist Eduardo Eizirik of Brazil's Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul and University of Antwerp researcher Jonas Lescroart, Nogales-Ascarrunz helped establish that the animal was genetically distinct from other tiger cats. Genomic analysis of 38 individuals across the Leopardus genus indicated that L. tilcayo diverged from other tiger cats roughly 1.4 million years ago. The proposed name is based on the local name for the animal.
The finding also reshapes scientific understanding of tiger cats. What was once considered a single species is now recognised as a complex containing five species. L. tilcayo is known to inhabit Bolivia's Yungas forest ecoregion, but researchers still do not know how many survive in the wild, what they eat or how they reproduce.
The discovery carries conservation implications. When several genetically distinct species are grouped together, their individual populations may appear more secure than they actually are. As Nogales-Ascarrunz observed, the natural world remains extremely complex, with even well-studied groups such as cats still yielding undescribed species.