New Bolivian wildcat species discovered with only one known living member

A small spotted cat living in a rescue sanctuary in Bolivia has turned out to be something science had never formally recognized before. The animal, a ten-year-old named Tigrino, was brought to the sanctuary after a local resident found it in the forest and initially mistook it for a domestic kitten. As it matured, it became clear the cat did not behave like a house pet, and when a Bolivian scientist named Paola Nogales-Ascarrunz noticed something unusual about its appearance while volunteering at the sanctuary, she began asking questions that would eventually reshape what we know about wild cats in South America.

Nogales-Ascarrunz, based at Universidad Mayor de San Andres in La Paz, had heard reports of other small wild cats spotted in the dense Yungas forests of Bolivia, but these sightings had never been formally studied. She partnered with researchers from around the world, including conservation geneticist Eduardo Eizirik from Brazil and Caroline Sartor from Oxford's Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, to investigate the genetic family tree of tiger cats—a group of small, spotted wild felines found across Central and South America from Costa Rica to Argentina. These cats look remarkably similar to one another, and even trained experts struggle to tell them apart. Using DNA from living animals and specimens held in museums, the team set out to clarify which cats were actually distinct species.

What they discovered was published in Current Biology and upended the existing taxonomy. The cat living in the Bolivian sanctuary turned out to be a species previously unknown to science, now formally named Leopardus tilcayo, or the Tilcaya cat. But that was only part of the finding. The research suggested that tiger cats as a group comprise five species, not the three that had been recognized before. This means the total number of recognized cat species globally has jumped from 41 to at least 44, with the possibility of more.

The significance of this discovery extends beyond the novelty of naming something new. Tigrino remains the only confirmed living member of Leopardus tilcayo known to science, though researchers believe others exist in the forests where they have simply gone unnoticed. The cat had been hiding in plain sight, as Eizirik put it, because nobody was looking. There were almost no museum specimens, almost no photographs, almost no scientific records. The species had been confused with its relatives for so long that it never registered as distinct.

This gap in human knowledge matters urgently for conservation. Sartor emphasized that it is impossible to protect a species if we do not know what it is or where it lives. Tiger cats as a group face serious threats from deforestation, habitat loss, and illegal hunting, and they receive far less public and scientific attention than larger cats like lions, leopards, and tigers. The newly identified Leopardus tilcayo has not even been included in previous conservation assessments because it did not officially exist. Now that it does, it enters a world of conservation priorities already stretched thin.

Andrew Kitchener, a mammal expert at National Museums Scotland who was not involved in the research, described tiger cats as a "taxonomic nightmare." The cats are confusing because they look so similar to one another and because museum collections are sparse. Even now, with genetic tools revealing new species, scientists are still learning how to distinguish them by sight alone. Nogales-Ascarrunz reflected on the broader implication: "It's amazing that there are still new species waiting to be discovered. We don't have to go to a volcano, an island, or deep into the sea." The discovery underscores how much biodiversity remains unknown in regions of the world that have received less scientific attention, and how much work remains simply to catalog what exists before it disappears.